Material Selection and Design of Orbital Maneuver of Solar Sail Orbit to Explore the Outer Solar System
Keywords:
Solar Sail, IKAROS, Runge-Kutta-Verner, Monte Carlo, Bisection, extended source, limb darkening, graphite, molybdenum, SGLAbstract
Motivation of this research is the success of several spacecraft missions that use Solar Sail propulsion such as IKAROS, Lightsail, etc, and the development of technology to create lightweight, thin, but very strong materials such as aerogel, graphite, carbon foam, and others. Each material has several parameters, such as strength, absorption coefficient, transmissivity, and reflectivity when interacting with photons. This parameter produces dynamics that are quite complicated so that we need to be simulated to maximize the momentum of the Solar Sail. Software that supported simulation is Jupyter Notebook and Matlab. This research also uses several numerical methods such as Runge-Kutta-Verner, Monte Carlo, and Bisection. The results are that graphite+molybdenum material can be used for the Outer Solar System to target Solar Sail with a minimum distance of 0.015 au from the Sun. At near 1 au from the Sun, we can assume the sun as a point source, but if Solar Sail is very close to the Sun (r >> 1 au), we have to use the Sun as an extended+limb darkening source model. The 0.01 kg/m2 Solar Sail has a speed between 65 to 134 km/s depending on the maneuver model. At that speed, Solar Sail can reach the Kuiper Belt object (30 – 100 au) in 3.4 to 4.4 years. The 0.001 kg/m2 Solar Sail has a speed between 32 to 414 km/s depending on the maneuver model and can reach SGL (Solar Gravitational Lens) in 7 years.
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