Abstract
At this point in its development, the solar sail can be characterized as fairly late in its theoretical phase and fairly early in its developmental phase. It is probably equivalent to the chemical rocket in 1930, the automobile in 1900, and the heavier-than-air aircraft in 1910.
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Further Reading
Further Reading
Two excellent sources considering in greater depth the material covered in this chapter are Jerome L. Wright Space Sailing, Gordon and Breach, 1992, and Colin McInnes Solar Sailing, Springer-Praxis, Chichester, UK, 1999. More information on various sail configurations can be found in the appendix of Gregory L. Matloff Deep-Space Probes, 2nd ed., Springer-Praxis, Chichester, UK, 2005.
An excellent review of the JAXA IKAROS sail mission is T. Tsuda, O. Mori, R. Funase, H. Sawada, T. Yamamoto, T. Saiki, T. Endo, K. Yonekura, H. Hoshino, and J. Kamaguchi, “Achievement of IKAROS-Japanese Deep Space Solar Sail Demonstration Mission,” Acta Astronautica, 82, 183-188 (2013). An earlier version of this manuscript is in Proceedings of the Seventh IAA Symposium on Realistic Near-Term Advanced Scientific Space Missions—Missions to the Outer Solar System and Beyond, ed. G. Genta, Aosta, Italy, 11-13 July, 2011.
For a description of IKAROS gamma-ray burst observations, see D. Yonetoku, T. Murakami, S. Gunji, T. Mihara, K. Toma, T. Morihara, T. Takahashi, Y. Wakashima, H. Yonemochi, T. Sakashita, N. Toukairin, H. Fujimoto, and Y. Kodama, “Gamma-Ray Burst Jets Probed by Gamma-Ray Polarization,” Astrophysical Journal Letters, 758, No. 1, L1 (2012).
Nanosail has been described in several sources. One useful paper is L. Johnson, M. Whorton, A. Heaton, R. Pinson, G. Laue, and C. Adams. “Nanosail-D: A Solar Sail Demonstration Mission,” Acta Astronautica, 68, 571-575 (2011). An earlier version of this manuscript is in Proceedings of the Sixth IAA Symposium on Realistic Near-Term Advanced Scientific Space Missions—Missions to the Outer Solar System and Beyond, ed. G. Genta and G. Vulpetti, Aosta, Italy, 6-9 July, 2009
For additional information regarding Nanosail, consult the project’s website http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/smallsats/nanosaild.html
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Vulpetti, G., Johnson, L., Matloff, G.L. (2015). Progress to Date. In: Solar Sails. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-0941-4_13
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