Solar sail technology development and demonstration

Solar sail technology holds the promise of significantly enhancing the interplanetary infrastructure for low-cost space exploration missions in the new millennium by exploiting the freely available space resource of solar radiation pressure for primary propulsion. Although the basic idea behind solar sailing appears simple, challenging engineering problems have to be solved. Based on promising results obtained during system studies by DLR (in cooperation with NASA/JPL) and ESA, a joint effort for the development and demonstration of the critical technologies on a co-funding basis was initiated in mid-1998. As a first major milestone in terms of demonstration a 20 m×20 m breadboard model was developed, manufactured and tested in December 1999. It demonstrates the feasibility of a fully deployable lightweight solar sail structure in simulated 0 g environment under ambient environmental conditions. The paper summarizes the main results of the ground tests and recommends next steps in solar sail technology development.