TY  - CHAP
A1  - Dachwald, Bernd
A1  - Wurm, P.
T1  - Design concept and modeling of an advanced solar photon thruster
T2  - Advances in the Astronautical Sciences
N2  - The so-called "compound solar sail", also known as "Solar Photon Thruster" (SPT), holds the potential of providing significant performance advantages over the flat solar sail. Previous SPT design concepts, however, do not consider shadowing effects and multiple reflections of highly concentrated solar radiation that would inevitably destroy the gossamer sail film. In this paper, we propose a novel advanced SPT (ASPT) design concept that does not suffer from these oversimplifications. We present the equations that describe the thrust force acting on such a sail system and compare its performance with respect to the conventional flat solar sail.
KW  - solar sails
Y1  - 2009
SN  - 978-087703554-1
SN  - 00653438
N1  - 19th AAS/AIAA Space Flight Mechanics Meeting; Savannah, GA; United States; 8 February 2009 through 12 February 2009
SP  - 723
EP  - 740
PB  - American Astronautical Society
CY  - San Diego, Calif.
ER  - 
TY  - CHAP
A1  - Dachwald, Bernd
A1  - Wurm, P.
T1  - Mission analysis for an advanced solar photon thruster
T2  - 60th International Astronautical Congress 2009, IAC 2009
N2  - The so-called "compound solar sail", also known as "Solar Photon Thruster" (SPT), is a solar sail design concept, for which the two basic functions of the solar sail, namely light collection and thrust direction, are uncoupled. In this paper, we introduce a novel SPT concept, termed the Advanced Solar Photon Thruster (ASPT). This model does not suffer from the simplified assumptions that have been made for the analysis of compound solar sails in previous studies. We present the equations that describe the force, which acts on the ASPT. After a detailed design analysis, the performance of the ASPT with respect to the conventional flat solar sail (FSS) is investigated for three interplanetary mission scenarios: An Earth-Venus rendezvous, where the solar sail has to spiral towards the Sun, an Earth-Mars rendezvous, where the solar sail has to spiral away from the Sun, and an Earth-NEA rendezvous (to near-Earth asteroid 1996FG3), where a large orbital eccentricity change is required. The investigated solar sails have realistic near-term characteristic accelerations between 0.1 and 0.2mm/s2. Our results show that a SPT is not superior to the flat solar sail unless very idealistic assumptions are made.
KW  - Interplanetary flight
Y1  - 2009
SN  - 978-161567908-9
N1  - 60th International Astronautical Congress 2009, IAC 2009; Daejeon; South Korea; 12 October 2009 through 16 October 2009
VL  - Vol. 8
SP  - 6838
EP  - 6851
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Amsterdam
ER  -