Development, Manufacturing and Environmental Testing of a Sail Segment and a Sail Container for a Solar Sail Mission
Abstract
Solar Sails are spacecrafts, equipped with large highly reflecting foils to use the sun light pressure for the acceleration in space. These very thin and large sized highly reflecting foils are exposed to different environmental loading effects in the launch and mission phases. A challenge in this matter is the mechanical sensitivity of these very thin films what additionally complicates the development and manufacturing of such large scaled sail foil segments, the handling, preparation and functional testing.
- Publication:
-
Environmental Testing for Space Programmes
- Pub Date:
- August 2004
- Bibcode:
- 2004ESASP.558...51L