SH040-11
The Solar Cruiser Solar Sail Technology Demonstration Mission: An ESPA-class Rideshare Enabling New Capabilities for Space Science

Monday, 14 December 2020: 16:30
Virtual
Les Johnson1, John Carr2, David E. McKenzie1, Jeffrey S Newmark3 and Dana Turse4, (1)NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL, United States, (2)NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, United States, (3)NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC, United States, (4)Roccor, LLC, Longmont, CO, United States
Abstract:
Selected by NASA as a candidate ESPA-class rideshare technology demonstration mission to launch with the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) mission in 2024, the NASA MSFC Solar Cruiser mission would mature solar sail technology for use in future Heliophysics missions, as well as missions of interest across a broad user community including NOAA, Earth, and Planetary Sciences. Solar sails, which use reflected sunlight to derive thrust, can be used to create artificial equilibria and near-indefinite station-keeping at locations sunward of L1 along the Sun Earth Line (SEL), or at any desired offset from the SEL leading or trailing the Earth in its orbit. They can change the heliocentric inclination of a spacecraft from the ecliptic to as high as solar polar, stopping and remaining at any intermediate inclination orbit in between or can be used around a range of solar system bodies.

The Solar Cruiser mission would fly a small spacecraft (~100 kg) with a large (>1600 square meter) solar sail containing embedded reflectivity control devices (RCDs) and photovoltaic cells, attaining a characteristic acceleration of >0.12 mm/s2. The mission concept includes successful deployment of the solar sail, validation of all sail subsystems, controlled station-keeping inside of the Sun-Earth L1 point, demonstration of pointing performance for science imaging, and finally an increase in heliocentric inclination (out of the ecliptic plane).

Solar Cruiser would serve as a pathfinder for missions that observe the solar environment from unique vantage points such sub-L1 and at high solar inclinations, opening a fundamentally new range of observational capabilities for the Heliophysics Program and for space weather science and monitoring. Observations away from the SEL present unique opportunities for answering outstanding science questions of Heliophysics, for improving space-weather monitoring and prediction, and for revealing new discoveries about our Sun and solar system.

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