Flying on a Rainbow: A Solar-Driven Diffractive Sailcraft
arXiv:1805.05864
Abstract
Radiation pressure afforded by natural broadband sunlight upon a transmissive diffractive sail is theoretically and numerically investigated. A grating period of one micrometer is found to convert 83% of the solar black body spectrum into sailcraft momentum. Non-optimized orbit-raising trajectories for diffractive and reflective sails are compared. Potential advantages of diffractive sails are also described.
5 pages, 4 figures, Invited Paper to the Special Issue of the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (JBIS), 2017 meeting of the Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop (TVIW)