Novel solar sails could get us anywhere in the solar system cheaply - by AndyTomaswick
The original Sundiver concept was developed as part of a NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts grant that looked at a way to get a telescope to the solar gravitational lens point, about 500 AU away from the Sun. We did a story on that project back when it was funded. But the underlying technology is helpful for much more than just getting a specific payload to a point very far away.
The mission concept in the paper partly defines those technologies. The authors calculate that a complete Sundiver mission could carry as much as 15 kg of scientific payload at up to 7 AU per year – almost double the speed of Voyager, the current fastest mission to the outer solar system. But to do that, it has to take a relatively dangerous route, by literally diving in towards the Sun.Solar sails pushing efficiency is directly proportional to the amount of sunlight that falls on the sails.
Most of that technology is already mature enough to be assembled into a functional solar sailing system. But the team has even more ambitious plans that utilize technologies that are still in development, such as NASA’s CubeSat Proximity Operations Demonstration project, which showed that CubeSats can maneuver together to join into larger satellites once already out in space.
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