Electric sail

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An Electric sail (also called electric solar wind sail or E-Sail) is a proposed form of spacecraft propulsion using the dynamic pressure of the solar wind as a source of thrust. It uses an electric field for deflecting solar wind protons and extracting momentum from them. It was invented by Pekka Janhunen from Finland in 2006 at the FMI and creates a "virtual" sail by forming an electric field on small wires.[1]

E-Sail project

To test the technology a new European Union-backed electric sail study project is underway.[2] The EU funding contribution is 1.7 million euros. Its goal is to build laboratory prototypes of the key components. The E-Sail research project involves five European countries and was scheduled to last for three years. In the EU evaluation, the project got the highest marks in its category.[3] The technology could enable faster and cheaper access to the solar system and in the longer run may enable an economic utilisation of asteroid resources.[4] The working principles of the electric sail began to be tested in 2013 on the Estonian ESTCube-1 to be followed in 2014 on the Finnish Aalto-1 nanosatellites.[5][6]

Principles of operation and design

The electric sail consists of a number of thin, long and conducting tethers which are kept in a high positive potential by an onboard electron gun. The positively charged tethers repel solar wind protons, thus deflecting and extracting momentum from them. Simultaneously they attract electrons from the solar wind plasma. The arriving electric current is compensated by the electron gun.

One way to deploy the tethers is to rotate the spacecraft, using centrifugal force keep them stretched. By fine-tuning the potentials of individual tethers and thus the solar wind force individually, the spacecraft's attitude can be controlled.

E-sail missions can be launched at almost any time with only minor variations in travel time. By contrast, conventional slingshot missions must wait for the planets to reach a particular alignment.[7]

Intrinsic limitations

The electric sail probably cannot be used inside planetary magnetospheres because the solar wind does not penetrate them, allowing only slower plasma flows and magnetic fields. While modest variation of the thrust direction can be achieved by inclining the sail, the thrust vector always points more or less radially outward from the sun. It has been estimated that maximum operational inclination would be 60°, resulting in a thrusting angle of 30° from the outward radial direction.

Unlike conventional spacecraft that can orbit around their destinations, E-sail vehicles have no way to reduce their velocity to match that required for orbit, limiting the amount of time for research to the period during which the ship approaches the planet, and to a few moments after any research pod enters the destination's atmosphere, before it burns up.[7]

Electric solar wind sail

ESTCube-1 was the first satellite to test electric sail. Artist's rendering of the satellite.

The electric solar wind sail has little in common with the traditional solar sail. First of all the E-Sail gets its momentum from the solar wind ions, whilst a photonic sail is propelled by photons. In the E-Sail, the part of the sail is played by straightened conducting tethers (wires) which are placed radially around the host ship. The wires are electrically charged and thus an electric field is created around the wires. The electric field of the wires extends a few dozen metres into the surrounding solar wind plasma.

Because the solar wind electrons affect the electric field (similarly to the photons on a traditional solar sail), the functional radius of the wires is based on the electric field that is generated around the wire rather than the actual wire itself. This fact also makes it possible to maneuver by regulating the wires' electric charge. A full-sized sail would have 50–100 straightened wires with a length of about 20 km each.

In order to minimise damage to the thin wires from micrometeoroids, the wires would be formed from multiple strands, 25–50 micrometers in diameter, welded together at regular intervals. Thus, even if one wire was severed, a conducting path along the full length of the braided wire would remain in place. The feasibility of using ultrasonic welding was demonstrated at the University of Helsinki in January 2013.[8]

Applications

  • Fast missions (>50 km/s or 10 AU/year) out of the Solar system and heliosphere with small or modest payload
  • As a brake for a small interstellar probe which has been accelerated to high speed by some other means such as laser lightsail
  • Inward-spiralling missions to study the Sun at a closer distance
  • Two-way missions to inner Solar System objects such as asteroids
  • Off-Lagrange point solar wind monitoring spacecraft for predicting space weather with a longer warning time than 1 hour

Uranus entry probe

Janhunen has proposed a mission to Uranus powered by an electric sail. The mission could reach its destination in about the same time that the earlier Galileo space probe required to arrive at Jupiter, just over one fourth as far away. Galileo took 6 years to reach Jupiter at a cost of $1.6 billion, while Cassini-Huygens took 7 years to get to cover the Saturn and cost almost as much. The sail is expected to generate 540 watts, producing about 0.5 newtons accelerating the craft by about 1 mm/s2. The craft would reach a velocity of about 20 km/s by the time it reaches Uranus, 6 years after launch.[7]

The proposed craft comprises three parts: the E-sail module with solar panels and reels to hold the wires; the main body, including chemical thrusters for adjusting trajectory en route and at destination and communications equipment; and a research module to enter Uranus' atmosphere and make measurements for relay to Earth via the main body.[7]

References

  1. ↑ ELECTRIC SAIL FOR PRODUCING SPACECRAFT PROPULSION
  2. ↑ EU-Backed 'Electric Sail' Could Be the Fastest Man-Made Device Ever Built
  3. ↑ Electric solar wind sail spacecraft propulsion
  4. ↑ "EU project to build Electric Solar Wind Sail". Physorg.com. Retrieved 2014-01-12. 
  5. ↑ EU project to build Electric Solar Wind Sail
  6. ↑ Eesti esimene satelliit on valmimas
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Emerging Technology From the arXiv January 9, 2014. "New Form of Spacecraft Propulsion Proposed For Uranus Mission | MIT Technology Review". Technologyreview.com. Retrieved 2014-01-12. 
  8. ↑ Superthin wire for electric sail space propulsion engineered, Mark Hoffman, Science World Report, 10 Jan 2013.

Sources

External links

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