FHE Solar Sails Investigation Article

This slide deck presents Investigations and resources for exploring solar sails. Missions include Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3), Near-Earth Asteroid Scout (NEA Scout), and the Solar Cruiser mission.

NASA is developing new deployable structures and materials technologies for solar sail propulsion systems destined for future low-cost deep space missions. Just as a sailboat is powered by wind in a sail, solar sails employ the pressure of sunlight for propulsion, eliminating the need for conventional rocket propellant.

NASA’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail System, or ACS3, technology demonstration uses composite materials to test applications of solar sails in future space missions. Data obtained from this demonstration will guide the design of future larger-scale composite solar sail systems that could be used for space weather early warning satellites, near-Earth asteroid reconnaissance missions, or communications relays for crewed missions.

NEA Scout was a CubeSat that flew as a secondary payload on Artemis I, that was to be propelled by a solar sail and take pictures of a near-Earth asteroid. Likewise, the solar sail technologies proposed on Solar Cruiser will enable future missions to address important science questions about the Sun, its interaction with Earth, and other elements of the heliosphere. Specifically, Solar Cruiser was proposed to maintain a position sunward of Lagrange point L1—the position where Earth’s and the Sun’s gravity are balanced along the Sun-Earth-line.