Scalable solar-sail subsystem design concept

A scalable solar-sail concept, which integrates recently developed gossamer coilable longeron mast technology, has been developed, providing simple reliable deployment and structural robustness with minimum weight. This sail system is also unique in that it is composed of tensioned membranes without the incorporation of catenaries. This simplification is made possible through a mathematical demonstration of the insignificance of structural wrinkles on propulsive effectiveness. The sail package is a mass-optimized propulsion subsystem that can be mounted to a general heritage spacecraft to provide continuous low-level thrust. The design baseline is a three-axis-stabilized four-quadrant 40-m-square sail with attitude controlled by gimbaling the spacecraft on an extended boom. Considerations for the baseline design definition and the resulting performance vs size are reviewed.