NASA Solar Sail Technology Passes Crucial Deployment Test

By Wayne Smith

In his youth, NASA technologist Les Johnson was riveted by the 1974 novel “The Mote in God’s Eye,” by Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven, in which an alien spacecraft propelled by solar sails visits humanity. Today, Johnson and a NASA team are preparing to test a similar technology.

NASA continues to unfurl plans for solar sail technology as a promising method of deep space transportation. The agency cleared a key technology milestone in January with the successful deployment of one of four identical solar sail quadrants. The deployment was showcased Jan. 30 at Redwire Corp.’s new facility in Longmont, Colorado. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, leads the solar sail team, comprised of prime contractor Redwire, which developed the deployment mechanisms and the nearly 100-foot-long booms, and subcontractor NeXolve, of Huntsville, which provided the sail membrane. In addition to leading the project, Marshall developed the algorithms needed to control and navigate with the sail when it flies in space.

The sail is a propulsion system powered by sunlight reflecting from the sail, much like a sailboat reflects the wind. While just one quarter of the sail was unfurled in the deployment at Redwire, the complete sail will measure 17,780 square feet when fully deployed, with the thickness less than a human hair at 2 and a half microns. The sail is made of a polymer material coated with aluminum.

NASA’s Science Mission Directorate recently funded the solar sail technology to reach a new technology readiness level, or TRL 6, which means it’s ready for proposals to be flown on science missions.

“This was a major last step on the ground before it’s ready to be proposed for space missions,” Johnson, who has been involved with sail technology at Marshall for about 25 years, said. “What’s next is for scientists to propose the use of solar sails in their missions. We’ve met our goal and demonstrated that we’re ready to be flown.”

A solar sail traveling through deep space provides many potential benefits to missions using the technology because it doesn’t require any fuel, allowing very high propulsive performance with very little mass. This in-space propulsion system is well suited for low-mass missions in novel orbits.

“Once you get away from Earth’s gravity and into space, what is important is efficiency and enough thrust to travel from one position to another,” Johnson said.

A solar sail achieves that by reflecting sunlight – the greater the size of the sail, the greater thrust it can provide.

Les Johnson

NASA technologist

Some of the missions of interest using solar sail technology include studying space weather and its effects on the Earth, or for advanced studies of the north and south poles of the Sun. The latter has been limited because the propulsion required to  get a spacecraft into a polar orbit around the sun is very high and simply not feasible using most of the propulsion systems available today. Solar sail propulsion is also possible for enhancing future missions to Venus or Mercury, given their closeness to the Sun and the enhanced thrust a solar sail would achieve in the more intense sunlight there.

Moreover, it’s the ultimate green propulsion system, Johnson said – as long as the Sun is shining, the sail will have propulsion. Where the sunlight is less, he envisions a future where lasers could be used to accelerate the solar sails to high speeds, pushing them outside the solar system and beyond, perhaps even to another star. “In the future, we might place big lasers in space that shine their beams on the sails as they depart the solar system, accelerating them to higher and higher speeds, until eventually they are going fast enough to reach another star in a reasonable amount of time.”

To learn more about solar sails and other NASA advanced space technology, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/space-technology-mission-directorate

Jonathan Deal
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
256-544-0034
jonathan.e.deal@nasa.gov

Explore More

5 min read

NASA’s New Experimental Antenna Tracks Deep Space Laser

Article


4 days ago

17 min read

The Marshall Star for February 7, 2024

Article


5 days ago

5 min read

NASA to Demonstrate Autonomous Navigation System on Moon

Article


5 days ago

Powered by WPeMatico

Get The Details…
Beth Ridgeway

Astronaut Charles Bolden Preps for Deorbit

Astronaut Charles F. Bolden, STS-60 commander, sits at the commander’s station on the forward flight deck of the space shuttle Discovery in this image from February 1994. While aboard Discovery, the crew attempted to deploy the Wake Shield Facility-1, a deployable/retrievable experiment platform designed to leave a vacuum wake in low earth orbit that is 10,000 times greater than achievable on Earth. The crew also conducted in-flight medical and radiological investigations and spoke with world leaders from space.

Bolden was a member of NASA’s Astronaut Office for 14 years. After joining the office in 1980, he traveled to orbit four times aboard the space shuttle between 1986 and 1994, commanding two of the missions and piloting two others. 

He then became the 12th NASA Administrator. During his tenure, the agency’s support of commercial space transportation systems for reaching low Earth orbit enabled successful commercial cargo resupply of the space station and significant progress toward returning the capability for American companies to launch astronauts from American soil by 2017. Bolden also supported NASA’s contributions toward development of developing cleaner, faster, and quieter airplanes. The agency’s dynamic science activities under Bolden include an unprecedented landing on Mars with the Curiosity rover, launch of a spacecraft to Jupiter, enhancing the nation’s fleet of Earth-observing satellites, and continued progress toward the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope.

Watch the first episode of “The Color of Space: The Series” and delve deep into the extraordinary life of Charlie Bolden.

Credit: NASA

Powered by WPeMatico

Get The Details…
Monika Luabeya

Collins Aerospace Tests NASA Space Station Suit in Weightlessness

A key NASA design milestone was recently completed by Collins Aerospace as the company works to develop a next-generation spacesuit for use on the International Space Station.

The milestone – a pressure garment system fit and functionality test in a microgravity-like environment – marked an important step toward developing a suit for NASA that can be used for continuing operations and advancing scientific discovery in low Earth orbit.

The agency selected Collins to develop a new spacesuit that can replace the current space station spacesuit, known technically as an extravehicular mobility unit, which has been worn by astronauts to assemble and maintain the space station for over two decades.

The Collins test was conducted aboard a commercial microgravity aircraft to provide brief periods of weightlessness. During a parabolic flight, a pilot creates weightless conditions for around 20 seconds at a time by conducting a series of roller-coaster-like maneuvers. This allows engineers, scientists, and students to test hardware and conduct scientific experiments in a space-like gravity environment without ever going into space. 

The test was a key step in NASA’s preliminary design review process, one of a series of checkpoints in the project’s design lifecycle, that ensures the design meets all system requirements before manufacturing of flight-ready units can begin.

Collins will continue testing its spacesuit in a vacuum chamber, where air will be removed to create a vacuum to see how the spacesuit performs in a space-like atmosphere, as well as at the agency’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, a 40-foot deep pool at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, that simulates a microgravity environment for astronaut spacewalk training.

This next-generation spacesuit is designed to advance NASA’s spacewalking capabilities in low Earth orbit. It is being developed to support station maintenance and operations as NASA and its international partners continue carrying out scientific research that benefits humanity and demonstrates new technologies for future human and robotic missions.

Powered by WPeMatico

Get The Details…
Victoria Ugalde

NASA to Provide Coverage of Progress 87 Launch, Space Station Docking

NASA will provide live coverage of the launch and docking of a Roscosmos cargo spacecraft carrying about three tons of food, fuel, and supplies for the crew aboard the International Space Station.

The unpiloted Progress 87 resupply spacecraft is scheduled to launch at 10:25 p.m. EST Wednesday, Feb. 14 (8:25 a.m. Baikonur time Thursday, Feb. 15), on a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Live coverage will begin at 10 p.m. on NASA+, NASA Television, the NASA app, YouTube, and the agency’s website. Learn how to stream NASA TV through a variety of platforms including social media.

The Progress spacecraft will be placed into an orbit for a two-day journey to the space station, culminating in an automatic docking to the aft port of the Zvezda service module at 1:12 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 17. NASA coverage of rendezvous and docking will begin at 12:30 a.m.

The International Space Station is a convergence of science, technology, and human innovation that enables research not possible on Earth. For more than 23 years, NASA has supported a continuous U.S. human presence aboard the orbiting laboratory, through which astronauts have learned to live and work in space for extended periods of time. The space station is a springboard for the development of a low Earth orbit economy and NASA’s next great leaps in exploration, including missions to the Moon under Artemis and ultimately, human exploration of Mars.

Learn more about the space station, its research, and crew, at:

https://www.nasa.gov/station

-end-

Josh Finch / Claire O’Shea
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
joshua.a.finch@nasa.gov / claire.a.o’shea@nasa.gov

Sandra Jones
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
sandra.p.jones@nasa.gov

Powered by WPeMatico

Get The Details…
Abbey A. Donaldson

NASA Marshall Invites Media to Meet New Center Director

NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center will host a media day at 9 a.m. on Thursday, Feb. 15, in the first-floor lobby of Building 4221 on Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, to introduce new Center Director Joseph Pelfrey. Media are invited to meet and speak with Pelfrey about his role.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson named Pelfrey director of Marshall on Feb. 5. Pelfrey had served as acting center director since July 2023. Appointed to the Senior Executive Service in 2016, Pelfrey served as the associate director for operations in Engineering, later becoming deputy manager and subsequently manager for Marshall’s Human Exploration Development and Operations Office. He was appointed as Marshall’s deputy center director in April 2022.

Media members interested in participating must request credentials by 1 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 13, to Lance Davis: 256-640-9065 or lance.d.davis@nasa.gov. NASA’s media accreditation policy is available online.

Media must be escorted to this event and should report to the Redstone Arsenal Joint Visitor Control Center Gate 9, Interstate 565 interchange at Research Park Boulevard by 8 a.m. on Feb. 15. Vehicles are subject to a security search at the gate, so please allow extra time. All members of news media – drivers and passengers – will need photo identification. Drivers must be prepared to provide proof of car insurance if requested.

NASA Marshall is one of the agency’s largest field centers, and manages NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, where some of the largest elements of the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and Orion spacecraft for the Artemis campaign are manufactured. The center also is responsible for the oversight and execution of an approximately $5 billion portfolio comprised of human spaceflight, science, and technology development efforts. Its workforce consists of nearly 7,000 employees, both civil servants and contractors. 

Learn more about Pelfrey in his biography online at:

https://www.nasa.gov/people/joseph-pelfrey/

Lance D. Davis
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.,
256-640-9065
lance.d.davis@nasa.gov

Explore More

4 min read

NASA Solar Sail Technology Passes Crucial Deployment Test

Article


2 hours ago

17 min read

The Marshall Star for February 7, 2024

Article


5 days ago

5 min read

NASA to Demonstrate Autonomous Navigation System on Moon

Article


5 days ago

Powered by WPeMatico

Get The Details…
Beth Ridgeway