'Solar sail' to deep space, created by Hang Wooyeon [Now in space]
A research team from the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (President Lee Sang-cheol) has developed a solar sail that can be applied to a space sailboat powered by solar wind.
KARI announced on the 13th that it had successfully developed a prototype of a solar sail deployment device and demonstrated its deployment through 'Research on Solar Photon Diffraction Propulsion Space Navigation Technology' (Principal Investigator Cheon I-jin) since June of last year.
A solar sail made by KARI. [Photo = KARI]
A solar sail obtains propulsion by reflecting photons emitted by the sun onto the sail, just like a sailboat sailing using the wind. This is a technology that can be applied to spacecraft navigating space for long periods of time without separate fuel.
The solar sail developed by KARI is 10m long and 10m wide, larger than the ACS3 (Advanced Composite Solar Sail System) space sail launched by NASA in April 2024, which is 9m long and 10m wide. It is very light as it uses 12μm thick aluminum-deposited PET film.
The deployment device, which stores the solar sail and then unfolds it in space, was created using the technology of a domestic tape measure company and can fold the 10m long and 10m sail to within 20cm long and 10cm wide. It is 31.4cm high and weighs 10kg, so it can be loaded onto a 12U cube satellite (a hexahedron whose length, width, and height are each 10cm).
KARI expects that solar sail technology can be applied not only to deep space exploration, but also to solving the problem of space debris (such as fragments of terminated satellites) in low Earth orbit.
Lee Sang-cheol, the president of Hangwooyeon, said, "The solar sail deployment device developed using domestic technology will enhance our country's deep space exploration capabilities in the future," and added, "We will continue to research creative areas of use so that it can be applied to various space activities."
https://www.inews24.com/view/blogger/1813354
댓글
댓글 쓰기