Photonic materials for interstellar solar sailing

Abstract

Solar sails are of great promise for space exploration, affording missions that push the limits of the possible. They enable a variety of novel science missions ranging from ultrafast interstellar travel to imaging the poles of the sun—missions that are beyond the reach of current propulsion technology. Here, we describe requirements and challenges associated with optical materials and photonic designs facing the next generation of solar sails. A technology development roadmap is outlined to guide researchers in pioneering the space faring future.

Wind--Pellet Shear Sailing

“…Using the expression for ∆U ISM from energy conservation in (15) and transforming back to the rest frame via the following transformation…”

“…Clearly, in facing the central problem of collecting and concentrating the energy necessary for interstellar propulsion, it is attractive to convert the energy available from natural sources in space directly into a form useful for spacecraft propulsion. This is the motivation behind solar-photon sails [14,15] and solar-wind particle sails [16][17][18][19]. In these cases, the "beam source" is provided for free by the Sun, but in both cases, there are speed limits (< 0.02 c) well below those necessary for practical interstellar flight.…”

Multifunctional metasails for self-stabilized beam-riding and optical communication

“…Nevertheless, the dramatic technological advances in the 21st century have brought this goal closer 1 Page 1 of 18 Nanoscale Advances within a reach. Particularly, the successful interplanetary space missions by JAXA and NASA using lightsails in recent years [4,5,6,7] has re-sparked the interest in the use of photonic propulsion for deep space exploration [8].…”

“…In particular, the successful interplanetary space missions by JAXA and NASA using lightsails in recent years [4][5][6][7] have re-sparked the interest in the use of photonic propulsion for deep space exploration. 8 The concept of the lightsail was rst conceived of by Tsiolkovskiy and Tsander, who proposed the use of the radiation pressure of sunlight as a propellant for spacecras by utilizing large reective mirrors which would eliminate the need for reaction mass. 9 The operating principle of a lightsail is based on the momentum exchange between the light and the object upon scattering, which is manifested by an optical force exerted on the object.…”

Self-stabilization of light sails by damped internal degrees of freedom

“…The sail is expected to have a mass of about one gram, with a payload that contains the detectors and electronics necessary to send a signal back to Earth having a similar mass [6]. There are numerous scientific and engineering challenges in every aspect of this grand vision, including laser array design [7], material choice [6,8], stability of the sail under acceleration [9], heat management [6,10,11] and communication [12].…”