Electric sail,photonic sail and deorbiting applications of the freely guided photonic blade |
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Institution: | 1. University of Basilicata, School of Engineering, 10, Ateneo Lucano Street, 85100 Potenza, Italy;2. National Research Council, Institute of Methodologies for Environmental Analysis (IMAA), c/da S.Loja, 85050 Tito Scalo (PZ), Italy;1. Solar System Missions Division, ESA/ESTEC, Noordwijk, Netherlands;2. Office for Support to New Member States, ESA/ESTEC, Netherlands;3. Science Payload Instrument Section, ESA/ESTEC, Netherlands;1. Science and Technology on Aerospace Flight Dynamics Laboratory, Beijing 100094, China;2. Beijing Aerospace Control Center, Beijing 100094, China;1. Politecnico di Milano, Polo Territoriale di Lecco, Via M. d′Oggiono 18/a, 23900 Lecco, Italy;2. Micos Engineering GmbH, Dübendorf (ZH), Switzerland |
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Abstract: | We consider a freely guided photonic blade (FGPB) which is a centrifugally stretched sheet of photonic sail membrane that can be tilted by changing the centre of mass or by other means. The FGPB can be installed at the tip of each main tether of an electric solar wind sail (E-sail) so that one can actively manage the tethers to avoid their mutual collisions and to modify the spin rate of the sail if needed. This enables a more scalable and modular E-sail than the baseline approach where auxiliary tethers are used for collision avoidance. For purely photonic sail applications one can remove the tethers and increase the size of the blades to obtain a novel variant of the heliogyro that can have a significantly higher packing density than the traditional heliogyro. For satellite deorbiting in low Earth orbit (LEO) conditions, analogous designs exist where the E-sail effect is replaced by the negative polarity plasma brake effect and the photonic pressure by atmospheric drag. We conclude that the FGPB appears to be an enabling technique for diverse applications. We also outline a way of demonstrating it on ground and in LEO at low cost. |
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Keywords: | Electric sail Photonic sail Propellantless propulsion Plasma brake Deorbiting Atmospheric drag deorbiting |
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