Flight of Microwave-Driven Sails: Experiments and Applications

Details Flight of Microwave-Driven Sails: Experiments and Applications Flight of Microwave-Driven Sails: Experiments and Applications

May 2003

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2003aipc..664..303b&link_type=abstract

BEAMED ENERGY PROPULSION: First International Symposium on Beamed Energy Propulsion. AIP Conference Proceedings, Volume 664, pp

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Spaceborne And Space Research Instruments, Apparatus, And Components, Laser Applications

Scientific paper

We have observed flight of ultralight sails of carbon-carbon microtruss material at several gees acceleration. To propel the material, we sent a 10 kW, 7 GHz beam into a 10-6 Torr vacuum chamber and onto sails of mass density 5-10 g/m2. At microwave power densities of ~kW/cm2 we saw upward accelerations of several gees: sails so accelerated reached >2000 K from microwave absorption. Data analysis and comparison with candidate acceleration mechanisms shows that photonic pressure can account for 3 to 30% of the observed acceleration and that the remainder comes from desorption of embedded molecules. This is a useful propulsion mechanism: A microwave beam source in orbit could illuminate a sail, provoking desorption and enhancing thrust by many orders of magnitude over solar sails, shortening the escape time to weeks (compared with years for solar sails).

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