NASA announced that in April, a next-generation solar sail technology, known as the Advanced Composite Solar Sail System, will launch aboard Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket from the company’s Launch Complex 1 in Māhia, New Zealand.
“The technology could advance future space travel and expand our understanding of our Sun and our solar system.”— The NASA
To explain, solar sails use the pressure of sunlight for propulsion, tilting towards or away from the Sun causing photons to bounce off the reflective sail and with this you can push a spacecraft.
Consequently, this eliminates heavy propulsion systems and could enable longer duration, lower cost missions.
Now, the advanced composite solar sail system demonstration uses a twelve-unit (12U) CubeSat that is built by NanoAvionics to test a new composite boom made of flexible polymers and carbon fiber materials that are stiffer and lighter than conventional ones. previous feather designs.
To be precise, NASA explains that the main objective of the mission is to demonstrate the deployment of the new boom, but once deployed, the team also hopes to demonstrate the performance of the sail.
“The arms tended to be heavy and metallic or made of a lightweight composite with a bulky design, neither of which work well for today’s small spacecraft. “Solar sails need very large, stable and lightweight arms that can be folded compactly,” — Keats Wilkie, principal investigator for the mission at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.
