A recently presented study Acta Astronautica and is currently available on the preprint server arXivHe is exploring the potential of using aerographite solar sails to travel to Mars and interstellar space; This could significantly reduce the time and fuel required for such missions.

This research comes at a time when ongoing solar sail research is being conducted by multiple organizations in conjunction with The Planetary Society’s successful LightSail2 mission, with the potential to develop faster and more efficient propulsion systems for long-duration space missions.

Dr. D., an astrophysicist at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research and co-author of the study. “Solar sail propulsion has the potential to rapidly deliver small payloads (up to one kilogram) throughout the solar system,” said René Geller. , tells Universe Today. “This seems ridiculously small compared to a conventional chemical engine that can carry hundreds of tonnes of payload into low Earth orbit and send many of them to the Moon, Mars and beyond. “But the main value of solar sail technology is speed.”

Unlike conventional rockets, which use fuel in the form of burning chemicals to propel external force behind the spacecraft, solar sails do not require fuel. Instead, they use sunlight for propulsion because the giant sails capture solar photons, just like sails capture wind as they travel across water. The longer the solar sails are deployed, the more solar photons are captured, gradually increasing the spacecraft’s speed.

For the study, researchers simulated how fast an airbrush solar sail weighing up to 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds), including 720 grams of airbrush with a cross-sectional area of ​​104 square meters, could reach Mars and the planet. The interstellar medium, also called the heliopause, uses two orbits from Earth known as direct outward transfer and inward transfer methods, respectively.

The direct transfer method for both the Mars journey and the heliopause involved deploying a solar sail and launching directly from polar orbit around the Earth. Researchers determined that Mars at opposition (directly opposite the Sun from Earth) when the solar sail is deployed and leaves Earth will produce the best results in terms of both speed and travel time.

The same deployment and ascent to polar orbit was also used for the heliopause orbit. For the inward method, the solar sail will be delivered using conventional chemical rockets to approximately 0.6 astronomical units (AU) from the sun, where the solar sail will deploy and begin its journey towards Mars, or the heliopause. So how does the airbrush solar sail make this journey more possible?

“Due to its low density of 0.18 kilograms per cubic metre, the airbrush blows away all conventional solar sail materials,” Julius Karlapp, a researcher at Dresden University of Technology and lead author of the study, told Universe Today. “Compared, for example, with Mylar (metalized polyester foil), the density is four times lower. Assuming that the thrust developed by the solar sail is directly related to the mass of the sail, the resulting thrust is much higher. Besides the acceleration advantage, the mechanical properties of the airbrush are also impressive.”

Through this simulation, the researchers found that for the direct outward method and the inward moving method, the solar sail reached Mars in 26 days and 126 days, respectively, with the first 103 days being the travel time from Earth to the deployment point. It is 0.6 astronomical units away.

For heliopause travel, both methods resulted in 5.3 years and 4.2 years respectively; The first 103 days of the internal transfer method were also devoted to travel time from Earth to the 0.6 AU deployment point. The reason why the heliopause is reached faster with the inward displacement method is that the solar sail reaches maximum speed after 300 days, whereas with the outward displacement method it reaches maximum speed after approximately two years.

Current travel times to Mars range from 7 to 9 months; This only occurs every two years during certain launch windows and depends on the positions of the two planets that will be aligned both at launch and during the arrival there or there of any spacecraft en route. Anthem. The current travel time to heliopause can be estimated using NASA’s Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes, which reached heliopause after approximately 35 years and 41 years, respectively.

The researchers note that one of the main problems with using solar sails is slowing down or deceleration upon reaching a destination, particularly Mars, and while they talk about aerial capture as a solution, they acknowledge that this still needs further study.

Physicist and professor of space systems at the Dresden University of Technology and Dr. He told Universe Today:

“Therefore, less fuel is required to enter Mars orbit. We use this braking maneuver to eliminate the need for additional braking engines, which reduces the mass of the spacecraft. We are currently investigating what alternative strategies might work for us. However, the braking method is one of the many problems we currently face.” Just one.”

Although solar sail technology was proposed by NASA in the 1970s, the most recent example of solar sail technology is NASA’s Solar Cruiser, currently scheduled for February 2025. Source