Measuring the Interplanetary Medium with a Solar Sail

Abstract

NASA has been considering a solar sail that would accelerate a craft to a high velocity (~ 14 AU/yr) by the time it reached 5 AU. Then the sail would be dropped and the craft would coast alone to deep space. We propose that the sail be retained longer. Then the density of the interplanetary medium could be determined by measuring the drag force on the huge sail using radiometric navigational data. Such an experiment would yield an independent, new type of measurement of the interplanetary medium and should be pursued.

12 pages

References in corpus (2)

• Study of the anomalous acceleration of Pioneer 10 and 11
• A Mission to Test the Pioneer Anomaly

Cited by in corpus (3)

• The Pioneer Anomaly
• Directly Measured Limit on the Interplanetary Matter Density from Pioneer 10 and 11
• Hydrogen Axion Star: Metallic Hydrogen Bound to a QCD Axion BEC