Here is a press release first seen on Science Blog that details NASA’s latest work on solar sails, and that of two key subcontractors. L’Garde’s solar sail deployment occurred in July, using a 100-foot in diameter vacuum chamber at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Ohio. The test included temperatures of minus 112 Fahrenheit to mimic actual space conditions, and used inflatable booms that become rigid once deployed. Able Engineering has also tested a solar sail deployment at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, VA using a graphite boom that is extended by remote control. Able’s boom supports a sail made of an aluminized material called CP-1, produced by SRS Technologies of Huntsville.
Deploying a solar sail is an enormous challenge, particularly when you start talking about sails considerably larger than these test models (we’ll need sails kilometers in diameter when and if we start talking about interstellar missions). Moktar Salama of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who has been studying deployment issues for some time, told me last year that scaling laws can be used — up to a point — to examine how to create sail systems. But compensating for gravity is a problem, which is why the next phase of Salama’s work will be to study spinning solar sail models in weightless conditions using the famous ‘Vomit Comet’ aircraft on which astronauts train.
