Exploring the Kuiper Belt with sun-diving solar sails

Abstract

We discuss a possiblity to survey many Kuiper Belt Objects (KBO) with a single launch using a few smallscale spacecraft, each equipped with solar sails, which could be unfurled from a single interplanetary bus at the perihelion of that craft's solar orbit. Each small-scale spacecraft would carry a scientific payload and would be directed to intersect one or more KBOs. The proposed scenario is the following: the sails are carried as a payload to a relatively small heliocentric distance (0.1 -0.3 AU); once at the perihelion, the sails are deployed. Besides electromagnetic propulsion due to the solar radiation, another mechanism could be convenient: thermal desorption, a physical process of mass loss which can provide additional thrust as heating liberates atoms, embedded on the surface of a solar sail. Therefore, the sails experience additional propulsive force due to the thermal desorption that dramatically increases the distance that sails travel per year.

Chasing nomadic worlds: A new class of deep space missions

“…If these materials are successfully deployed, achieving 𝑣 𝑡 ∼ 20 AU/yr seems feasible for solar sails launched near the Earth [168], in the absence of additional orbital maneuvers that further boost the speed [169]. At closer distances to the Sun, the terminal speed is enhanced accordingly by a few times [170]. If an aerographite sail were launched at merely 0.04 AU from the Sun, the final speed might become as high as ∼ 1000 AU/yr for small payloads of order 10 −3 kg [171]; 10 unforeseen engineering issues due to thermal effects could, however, arise in this scenario.…”

Inflation deployed torus-shaped solar sail accelerated via thermal desorption of coating

“…The corresponding analytical expressions for the velocity of the sail and the reasonability of this approximation is discussed in details in Refs. [24][25][26]. Also one should mention that the high reflectivity you want in a good solar sail is diametrically opposed to the high absorptivity you want in a coating material that's going to evaporate off.…”

Effects of attitude constraints on solar sail optimal interplanetary trajectories

“…Solar sails enable a number of advanced space missions that would be difficult to carry out with traditional propulsion systems [7,8,9,10], such as mission to Kuiper Belt objects [11], multi-asteroid rendezvous [12], asteroid de-spin and deflection [13], debris removal from geostationary orbit [14] . A typical reference mission that is often used to quantify the performance of a solar sail-based spacecraft is an orbit-to-orbit (that is, ephemeris-free), interplanetary transfer towards inner planets [15,16,17].…”