Solar Wind Sails

Review of Solar Magnetic Sailing Configurations for Space Travel

“…In a series of theoretical and experimental investigations on MagSail and its derivatives at JAXA and in collaboration with Japanese universities, Funaki et al [8][9][10][11][12] have lead research work in magnetic sails and propulsion systems that utilize magnetic field (revised M2P2 or magneto-plasmasail/MPS). The first laboratory experiment of MagSail was conducted to confirm theoretically derived thrust formula.…”

“…In addition to the spacecraft guidance method in a radial acceleration [31], electromagnet system should be studied in detail; until now, only rough estimations are conducted [9,32,33]. The principle of magneto-plasma sailing with magnetic field inflation by plasma injection developed by Funaki et al [8][9][10][11][12], Yamakawa et al [34], and Ashida et al [35], is shown in Fig. 4.…”

“…where r Li = 72 km if m i = 1.67 × 10 −27 kg, u sw = 400 km/s, e = 1.6 × 10 −19 C, and B mp = 29 nT [8,9,11,38,39,42]. At a given value of v ⊥ , the Larmor radius at which the particle will gyrate will be…”

“…Defining characteristic length of the magnetosphere as L, so that S = π L 2 , correlation between L and F is derived. One may notice that about L = 10 km is required to obtain 1 N, which will be suitable for a 1000-kg-class deep space explorer [8,11,34,32].…”

“…Since there is no need to deploy large mechanical structures, one potential significant benefit of the M2P2 is its small hardware size. Research groups in Japan, among others those led by Funaki, have also carried out significant work in magnetic sail propulsion systems [8][9][10][11][12]. The design of the magnetic sail type space propulsion has steadily evolved over time, and the first magnetic sail spacecraft model has been created [13][14][15][16].…”