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| Paper: |
Recent Advances in Electric Sail Development |
| Volume: |
406, Numerical Modeling of Space Plasma Flows: ASTRONUM - 2008 |
| Page: |
135 |
| Authors: |
Janhunen, P. |
| Abstract: |
The electric solar wind sail is a newly invented way for using the solar wind dynamic pressure for providing thrust for a spacecraft. An electric sail spacecraft deploys long, thin, conducting tethers which are centrifugally stretched and kept in a high positive potential by a continuously working onboard electron gun. A positively charged wire embedded in solar wind plasma produces a Debye sheath around itself. Inside the sheath, the wire electric field repels solar wind protons so that they are deflected from their originally straight trajectories and thereby give some of their momentum to the wire. The solar wind dynamic pressure (on average 2 nPa at 1 AU distance) is about 5000 times weaker than the radiation pressure of the Sun, but since the wire’s Debye sheath can be more than million times larger than the wire’s physical diameter, the electric sail can be a mass-efficient method of spacecraft propulsion. If realised, the Electric Sail will be a significant and direct technical utilisation of a naturally occurring space plasma flow. We give an overview of the present status of the Electric Sail effort, reviewing its plasma physical basis and some technical aspects and potential applications. One application for the Electric Sail could be to implement the Interstellar Heliopause Probe, that is, a flight across the heliopause with less than 20-25 years of traveltime. |
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