Skip to main content

New developments in solar sails could enable missions to the sun’s poles

It takes a lot of power to get a spacecraft through Earth’s atmosphere and out of its gravity. But once a craft has reached orbit, it requires relatively little power to move through space. In fact, even tiny amounts of consistent power could allow a craft to travel to the furthest depths of the solar system, which is the principle behind solar sailing. This technology attaches huge, thin sheets of reflective material to a spacecraft. Tiny photons of light from the sun bounce off this material and give the craft a tiny push forward, allowing it to sail through space.

Solar sail crafts like the LightSail 2 have proven that the technology works in principle. However, there are some limitations. For a start, solar sailing craft start off traveling much more slowly than those powered by thrusters. But a bigger issue is one of navigation. Solar sails have to work with the direction of sunlight available, and maneuvering them is difficult. Now, NASA is looking into new designs for solar sails which would improve their navigational capabilities.

Diffractive solar sails, depicted in this conceptual illustration, could enable missions to hard-to-reach places, like orbits over the Sun’s poles.
Diffractive solar sails, depicted in this conceptual illustration, could enable missions to hard-to-reach places, like orbits over the Sun’s poles. MacKenzi Martin

The idea is to use a technology called diffractive solar sails, which have small gratings in the sails which lets some light through. As light passes through a small opening it spreads out, in a process called diffraction, which still provides a push against the sail. But because of the gratings, the incoming light can be more precisely controlled, hence the craft can be more accurately maneuvered.

Recommended Videos

“Diffraction essentially lets you tailor the angle at which the incoming light is redirected,” explained Amber Dubill of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, leader of the research team, in a statement. It also allows the sail to be smaller than the current huge sails used by solar sail craft.

The team is developing the technology with an eye to performing a demonstration mission that would visit the sun’s poles. It’s hard to reach these poles using traditional spacecraft propulsion systems, but solar sails could be used to put a craft in orbit around them.

“While this technology can improve a multitude of mission architectures, it is poised to highly impact the heliophysics community’s need for unique solar observation capabilities,” said Dubill. “With our team’s combined expertise in optics, aerospace, traditional solar sailing, and metamaterials, we hope to allow scientists to see the sun as never before.”

NASA has awarded the group a $2 million research grant to develop this technology under its Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program. “As we venture farther out into the cosmos than ever before, we’ll need innovative, cutting-edge technologies to drive our missions,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson in a statement. “The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program helps to unlock visionary ideas — like novel solar sails — and bring them closer to reality.”

Georgina Torbet
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
Auroras and radiation from solar storms spotted on Mars
The specks in this scene were caused by charged particles from a solar storm hitting a camera aboard NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover. Curiosity uses its navigation cameras to try and capture images of dust devils and wind gusts, like the one seen here.

The specks in this scene were caused by charged particles from a solar storm hitting a camera aboard NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover. Curiosity uses its navigation cameras to try and capture images of dust devils and wind gusts, like the one seen here. NASA/JPL-Caltech

The recent solar storms caused epic events here on Earth, where auroras were visible across much of the globe last month. These storms, caused by heightened activity from the sun, don't only affect our planet though -- they also affect Mars. NASA missions like the Curiosity rover have been observing the effects of solar storms there, where the very thin atmosphere creates a potentially dangerous radiation environment. If we ever want to send people to visit the red planet, we're going to need to learn more about this radiation and how it's affected by events like solar storms.

Read more
NASA sets new target launch date for Starliner spacecraft
The Starliner atop an Atlas V rocket.

The Starliner spacecraft sits atop an Atlas V rocket at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA/Joel Kowsky

After calling off the launch of Boeing Space’s Starliner spacecraft on Saturday with just minutes to go, NASA says it's now aiming to send the vehicle on its first crewed mission at 10:52 a.m. ET on Wednesday, June 5.

Read more
Two tiny NASA satellites are launching to study Earth’s poles
The first of two CubeSats for the PREFIRE mission sits on a launch pad in Māhia, New Zealand, shortly before launching on May 25, 2024 at 7:41 p.m. NZST (3:41 a.m. EDT).

A CubeSat satellite sits on a launch pad in Māhia, New Zealand, shortly before launching on May 25, 2024. Rocket Lab

This weekend will be a busy time for rocket launches. Not only will NASA be attempting the first crewed launch of the Boeing Starliner, which is currently scheduled for Saturday, June 1, following a series of delays, but there will also be the second of a two-part launch of a new mission called PREFIRE (Polar Radiant Energy in the Far-InfraRed Experiment).

Read more