Many have dreamed of solar sailing technology for a long time. The simple elegance of sailing on the light waves of the sun has captured the imagination of engineers and writers. The amount of energy received compared to the amount needed to move useful payloads brought those dreams back to reality. The new solar sail architecture that is being developed by the team led by Amber Dubill of the John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory might have already been found by the heliophysics app.
diffractive light sailing is the technique they are using. It has advantages over existing solar sail technology. That is a big problem for most solar sails, which lose effectiveness if they are not facing the sun. Light spreads out when it passes through an opening. This property can be utilized in a solar sail material to allow a craft to turn away from the sun while still getting the pressure of light pushing it in whatever direction it turned.
To create diffractive pressure, the team created a material with very small gratings embedded in it to diffract the light on a surface that could still benefit from the force created when that light is absorbed. This would allow the sail to turn away from the sun and still benefit from a push from the light.
After completing Phase I and Phase II over the past few years, the NIAC is supporting the technology with a Phase III grant. Ground tests that could lead to a move to deep space are included in Phase III, which has $2 million in funding for two years.
These diffractive sails are most likely to be found in deep space. The researchers think they will be important in heliophysics. Magnetic interference in the space around the sun's poles doesn't work well for traditional propulsion technologies. The traditional solar sails wouldn't work well, as the incident light falling on them in these locations would either push them farther away from the sun or not push them at all.
A diffractive solar sail would allow a spacecraft to orient itself in the right direction while also using the force from light to move. This would allow a craft to observe the sun from a different angle. There is still a long way to go before any craft is equipped with one. After two more years of development, there will still be more work to be done, but the funding path past Phase III is murky at best. A new type of solar sail might be attached to the next generation of heliophysics lab. It could be used on many other programs as well.
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