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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 19 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2014

Solar and Drag Sail Propulsion: From Theory to Mission Implementation

Solar and drag sail technology is entering the mainstream for space propulsion applications within NASA and around the world. Solar sails derive propulsion by reflecting sunlight from a large, mirror- like sail made of a lightweight, reflective material. The continuous sunlight pressure provides efficient primary propulsion, without the expenditure of propellant or any other consumable, allowing for very high V maneuvers and long-duration deep space exploration. Drag sails increase the aerodynamic drag on Low Earth Orbit (LEO) spacecraft, providing a lightweight and relatively inexpensive approach for end-of-life deorbit and reentry. Since NASA began investing in the technology in the late 1990's, significant progress has been made toward their demonstration and implementation in space. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) managed the development and testing of two different 20-m solar sail systems and rigorously tested them under simulated space conditions in the Glenn Research Center's Space Power Facility at Plum Brook Station, Ohio. One of these systems, developed by L'Garde, Inc., is planned for flight in 2015. Called Sunjammer, the 38m sailcraft will unfurl in deep space and demonstrate solar sail propulsion and navigation as it flies to Earth-Sun L1. In the Flight Center (MSFC) managed the development and testing of two different 20-m solar sail systems and rigorously tested them under simulated space conditions in the Glenn Research Center's Space Power Facility at Plum Brook Station, Ohio. One of these systems, developed by L'Garde, Inc., is planned for flight in 2015. Called Sunjammer, the 38m sailcraft will unfurl in deep space and demonstrate solar sail propulsion and navigation as it flies to Earth-Sun L1. In the interim, NASA MSFC funded the NanoSail-D, a subscale drag sail system designed for small spacecraft applications. The NanoSail-D flew aboard the Fast Affordable Science and Technology SATellite (FASTSAT) in 2010, also developed by MSFC, and began its mission after it was ejected from the FASTSAT into Earth orbit, where it remained for several weeks before deorbiting as planned. NASA recently selected two small satellite missions for study as part of the Advanced Exploration Systems (AES) Program, both of which will use solar sails to enable their scientific objectives. Lunar Flashlight, managed by JPL, will search for and map volatiles in permanently shadowed Lunar craters using a solar sail as a gigantic mirror to steer sunlight into the shaded craters. The Near Earth Asteroid (NEA) Scout mission will use the sail as primary propulsion allowing it to survey and image one or more NEA's of interests for possible future human exploration. Both are being studied for possible launch in 2017. The Planetary Society's privately funded LightSail-A and -B cubesat-class spacecraft are nearly complete and scheduled for launch in 2015 and 2016, respectively. MMA Design launched their DragNet deorbit system in November 2013, which will deploy from the STPSat-3 spacecraft as an end of life deorbit system. The University of Surrey is building a suite of cubesat class drag and solar sail systems that will be launched beginning in 2015. As the technology matures, solar sails will increasingly be used to enable science and exploration missions that are currently impossible or prohibitively expensive using traditional chemical and electric rockets. For example, the NASA Heliophysics Decadal Survey identifies no less than three such missions for possible flight before the mid-2020's. Solar and drag sail propulsion technology is no longer merely an interesting theoretical possibility; it has been demonstrated in space and is now a critical technology for science and solar system exploration.

Johnson, Les↗
NASA NTRS2014

Solar and Drag Sail Propulsion: From Theory to Mission Implementation

Solar and drag sail technology is entering the mainstream for space propulsion applications within NASA and around the world. Solar sails derive propulsion by reflecting sunlight from a large, mirror- like sail made of a lightweight, reflective material. The continuous sunlight pressure provides efficient primary propulsion without the expenditure of propellant or any other consumable, allowing for very high V maneuvers and long-duration deep space exploration. Drag sails increase the aerodynamic drag on Low Earth Orbit (LEO) spacecraft, providing a lightweight and relatively inexpensive approach for end-of-life deorbit and reentry. Since NASA began investing in the technology in the late 1990's, significant progress has been made toward their demonstration and implementation in space. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) managed the development and testing of two different 20-m solar sail systems and rigorously tested them under simulated space conditions in the Glenn Research Center's Space Power Facility at Plum Brook Station, Ohio. One of these systems, developed by L'Garde, Inc., is planned for flight in 2015. Called Sunjammer, the 38m sailcraft will unfurl in deep space and demonstrate solar sail propulsion and navigation as it flies to Earth-Sun L1. In the interim, NASA MSFC funded the NanoSail-D, a subscale drag sail system designed for small spacecraft applications. The NanoSail-D flew aboard the Fast Affordable Science and Technology SATellite (FASTSAT) in 2010, also developed by MSFC, and began its mission after it was was ejected from the FASTSAT into Earth orbit, where it remained for several weeks before deorbiting as planned. NASA recently selected two small satellite missions as part of the Advanced Exploration Systems (AES) Program, both of which will use solar sails to enable their scientific objectives. Lunar Flashlight, managed by JPL, will search for and map volatiles in permanently shadowed Lunar craters using a solar sail as a gigantic mirror to steer sunlight into the shaded craters. The Near Earth Asteroid (NEA) Scout mission will use the sail as primary propulsion allowing it to survey and image one or more NEA's of interest for possible future human exploration. Both are planned for launch in 2017. As the technology matures, solar sails will increasingly be used to enable science and exploration missions that are currently impossible or prohibitively expensive using traditional chemical and electric rockets. For example, the NASA Heliophysics Decadal Survey identifies no less than three such missions for possible flight before the mid-2020's. Solar sail propulsion technology is no longer an intesting theoretical possibility; it has been demonstrated in space and is now a critical technology for science and solar system exploration.

Johnson, Les↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Zero-G Experiments of the BionicWingsat - A 2U-Cubesat with Deployable, Biologically-Inspired Wings

In this paper, recent testing of a novel deployable structure with several potential applications in space will be described, with the focus on performed deployment experiments in a DLR Zero-g flight campaign and in ground tests. Through a cooperative effort of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a biologically-inspired structurally-integrated membrane featuring distributed functional elements has been developed and integrated into the 2U CubeSat called BionicWingSat. Such a membrane structure could be useful for all sorts of applications in which a relatively flat area is desirable such as solar sails, drag sails, or solar shades. For SmallSats and CubeSats, the design proposed also has the desirable property of being self-deploying without the need for powered deployment mechanisms. Building on previous work inspired by the wings of earwigs, the research presented in this paper focuses on testing of developed design concepts for such structural systems. To do so 24 fully integrated wings on two BionicWingSats in 2U Cubesat format were experimentally deployed in a microgravity environment during a dedicated DLR Zero-g flight campaign in 2021. The results of these experiments, the built hardware and test articles, the test arrangement, as well as a comparison to ground tests are discussed in this paper.

Spacecraft structures↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Design and Testing of the BionicWingSat in a Zero-g Flight Campaign - A 2U-CubeSat with Deployable, Biologically-Inspired Wings

In this paper, recent developments in the design, manufacturing, and testing of a novel deployable structure with several potential applications in space will be described. Through a cooperative effort of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a biologically inspired structurally integrated membrane featuring distributed functional elements has been developed and tested in a 2U CubeSat called BionicWingSat. Such a membrane structure could be useful for several applications in which a relatively flat area is desirable such as solar sails, drag sails, or solar shades. For SmallSats and CubeSats, the design proposed also has the desirable property of being self-deploying without the need for powered deployment mechanisms. Building on previous work inspired by the wings of earwigs, the research presented in this paper includes structural design of self-deploying hinges, a survey of various advanced additive layer manufacturing (ALM) methods for making hinges, mechanical characterization of the hinges, and finite element analysis (FEA) of the hinges. In this work, the conflicting goals of maximizing deployed structural stiffness, maximizing deployed area, maximizing stowed packaging efficiency, and maximizing resistance to creep when stowed must be considered. The resulting design concept is a gossamer structure that cannot support its own weight in gravity. For this reason, a focus in this paper is on a parabolic flight test campaign in which 24 fully integrated wings on two BionicWingSats were tested in a microgravity environment. From this test campaign, several lessons were learned regarding the wing design and procedures for carrying out microgravity tests of this manner.

CubeSat↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Design and Testing of the BionicWingSat in a Zero-g Flight Campaign - A 2U-CubeSat with Deployable, Biologically-Inspired Wings

In this paper, recent developments in the design, manufacturing, and testing of a novel deployable structure with several potential applications in space will be described. Through a cooperative effort of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a biologically inspired structurally integrated membrane featuring distributed functional elements has been developed and tested in a 2U CubeSat called BionicWingSat. Such a membrane structure could be useful for several applications in which a relatively flat area is desirable such as solar sails, drag sails, or solar shades. For SmallSats and CubeSats, the design proposed also has the desirable property of being self-deploying without the need for powered deployment mechanisms. Building on previous work inspired by the wings of earwigs, the research presented in this paper includes structural design of self-deploying hinges, a survey of various advanced additive layer manufacturing (ALM) methods for making hinges, mechanical characterization of the hinges, and finite element analysis (FEA) of the hinges. In this work, the conflicting goals of maximizing deployed structural stiffness, maximizing deployed area, maximizing stowed packaging efficiency, and maximizing resistance to creep when stowed must be considered. The resulting design concept is a gossamer structure that cannot support its own weight in gravity. For this reason, a focus in this paper is on a parabolic flight test campaign in which 24 fully integrated wings on two BionicWingSats were tested in a microgravity environment. From this test campaign, several lessons were learned regarding the wing design and procedures for carrying out microgravity tests of this manner.

CubeSat↗
NASA NTRS2014

Flight Testing of a Low Cost De-Orbiting Device for Small Satellites

Use of small and very small spacecraft is rapidly becoming more common. Methods to intentionally deorbit these spacecraft at the end of useful satellite life are required. A family of mass efficient Roll-Out De- Orbiting devices (RODEO"TM") was developed by Composite Technology Development, Inc. (CTD). RODEO"TM" consists of lightweight film attached to a simple, ultra-lightweight, roll-out composite boom structure. This system is rolled to stow within a lightweight launch canister, allowing easy integration to the small satellite bus. The device is released at the end of useful lifetime and the RODEO"TM" composite boom unrolls the drag sail in a matter of seconds. This dramatically increases the deployed surface area, resulting in the higher aerodynamic drag that significantly reduces the time until reentry. A RODEO"TM" flight demonstration was recently conducted as part of the Colorado Space Grant Consortium's (COSGC) RocketSat-8 program, a program to provide students hands-on experience in developing experiments for space flight. The experiment was ultimately a success and RODEO (trademark) is now ready for future CubeSat missions.

Turse, Dana↗
NASA NTRS2009

Space Debris Environment Remediation Concepts

Long-term projections of the space debris environment indicate that even drastic measures, such as an immediate, complete halt of launch and release activities, will not result in a stable environment of man-made space objects. Collision events between already existing space hardware will within a few decades start to dominate the debris population, and result in a net increase of the space debris population, also in size regimes which may cause further catastrophic collisions. Such a collisional cascading will ultimately lead to a run-away situation ("Kessler syndrome"), with no further possibility of human intervention. The International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) has been investigating the status and the stability of the space debris environment in several studies by first looking into space traffic management possibilities and then investigating means of mitigating the creation of space debris. In an ongoing activity, an IAA study group looks at ways of active space debris environment remediation. In contrast to the former mitigation study, the current activity concentrates on the active removal of small and large objects, such as defunct spacecraft, orbital stages, and mission-related objects, which serve as a latent mass reservoir that fuels initial catastrophic collisions and later collisional cascading. The paper will outline different mass removal concepts, e.g. based on directed energy, tethers (momentum exchange or electrodynamic), aerodynamic drag augmentation, solar sails, auxiliary propulsion units, retarding surfaces, or on-orbit capture. Apart from physical principles of the proposed concepts, their applicability to different orbital regimes, and their effectiveness concerning mass removal efficiency will be analyzed. The IAA activity on space debris environment remediation is a truly international project which involves more than 23 contributing authors from 9 different nations.

Johnson, Nicholas L.↗
NASA NTRS1980

Longhorn Business Jets

Developed in NASA's Aircraft Energy Efficiency program and manufactured by Gates Learjet Corporation, the winglet is an aerodynamic innovation designed to reduce fuel consumption and improve airplane performance. Winglets are lifting surfaces designed to operate in the "vortex" or air whirlpool which occurs at an airplane's wingtip. Complex flow of air around wingtip creates drag which retards the plane's progress. Winglet reduces strength of vortex and thereby reduces strength of drag. Additionally, winglet generates its own lift, producing forward thrust in the manner of a boat's sail. Combination of reduced drag and additional thrust adds up to significant improvement in fuel efficiency.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS1988

Business Jets

Learjet Inc.'s Learjet 31 and Learjet 55C both feature NASA developed winglets, nearly vertical extensions of the wing designed to reduce fuel consumption and generally improve airplane's performance. Winglets are lifting surfaces designed to operate in the vortex or air whirlpool that occurs at an airplanes wingtip. This complex flow of air creates air drag; the winglets job is to reduce the strength of the vortex and thereby substantially reduce drag, additionally the winglet generates its own lift producing forward thrust in the manner of a sailboat's sail. Combination of reduced drag and additional thrust adds up to improvement in fuel efficiency.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS1986

A fundamental study of drag and an assessment of conventional drag-due-to-lift reduction devices

The integral conservation laws of fluid mechanics are used to assess the drag efficiency of lifting wings, both CTOL and various out-of-plane configurations. The drag-due-to-lift is separated into two major components: (1) the induced drag-due-to-lift that depends on aspect ratio but is relatively independent of Reynolds number; (2) the form drag-due-to-lift that is independent of aspect ratio but dependent on the details of the wing section design, planform and Reynolds number. For each lifting configuration there is an optimal load distribution that yields the minimum value of drag-due-to-lift. For well designed high aspect ratio CTOL wings the two drag components are independent. With modern design technology CTOL wings can be (and usually are) designed with a drag-due-to-lift efficiency close to unity. Wing tip-devices (winglets, feathers, sails, etc.) can improve drag-due-to-lift efficiency by 10 to 15% if they are designed as an integral part of the wing. As add-on devices they can be detrimental. It is estimated that 25% improvements of wing drag-due-to-lift efficiency can be obtained with joined tip configurations and vertically separated lifting elements without considering additional benefits that might be realized by improved structural efficiency. It is strongly recommended that an integrated aerodynamic/structural approach be taken in the design of (or research on) future out-of-plane configurations.

Yates, J. E.↗
NASA NTRS2006

Holographic Solar Photon Thrusters

A document discusses a proposal to incorporate holographic optical elements into solar photon thrusters (SPTs). First suggested in 1990, SPTs would be systems of multiple reflective, emissive, and absorptive surfaces (solar sails) that would be attached to spacecraft orbiting the Earth to derive small propulsive forces from radiation pressures. An SPT according to the proposal would include, among other things, a main sail. One side of the sail would be highly emissive and would normally face away from the Earth. The other side would be reflective and would be covered by white-light holographic images that would alternately become reflective, transmissive, and absorptive with small changes in the viewing angle. When the spacecraft was at a favorable orbital position, the main sail would be oriented to reflect sunlight in a direction to maximize the solar thrust; when not in a favorable position, the main sail would be oriented to present a substantially absorptive/emissive aspect to minimize the solar drag. By turning the main sail slightly to alternate between the reflective and absorptive/ emissive extremes, one could achieve nearly a doubling or halving of the radiational momentum transfer and, hence, of the solar thrust.

Johnson, Les↗
DOE OSTI2021

Aerodynamic integration produces a vehicle shape with a negative drag coefficient

Negative drag coefficients are normally associated with a vessel outfitted with a sail to extract energy from the wind and propel the vehicle forward. Therefore, the notion of a heavy vehicle, that is, a semi truck, that generates negative aerodynamic drag without a sail or any external appendages may seem implausible, especially given the fact that these vehicles have some of the largest drag coefficients on the road today. However, using both wind tunnel measurements and computational fluid dynamics simulations, we demonstrate aerodynamically integrated vehicle shapes that generate negative body-axis drag in a crosswind as a result of large negative frontal pressures that effectively “pull” the vehicle forward against the wind, much like a sailboat. While negative body-axis drag exists only for wind yaw angles above a certain analytical threshold, the negative frontal pressures exist at smaller yaw angles and subsequently produce body-axis drag coefficients that are significantly less than those of modern heavy vehicles. The application of this aerodynamic phenomenon to the heavy vehicle industry would produce sizable reductions in petroleum use throughout the United States.

42 ENGINEERING↗
NASA NTRS2016

Attitude Control System Design for CubeSats Configured with Exo-Brake Parachute

This paper develops a novel attitude control strategy for an Earth orbiting CubeSat spacecraft by utilizing the exo-brake parachute to modulate the atmospheric drag forces as a source of attitude control authority, enabling orbital exo-sail maneuvers. In particular, the spacecraft attitude controls can be realized through the two dimensional exo-sail maneuvers in pitch and yaw directions. The uncertain atmospheric drag induced disturbance torque is estimated through an adaptive parameter estimation process which makes use of the adaptive least-squares minimization techniques. The covariance updating law with a variable forgetting factor is adopted and it can be shown that the convergent rate for the estimation errors can be chosen at the same level as the forgetting factor, in order to meet the design needs. The proposed approach is best suited for Earth orbiting micronano-satellite applications, which are configured with exo-brake parachute. With integration of exo-sail actuation mechanism and disturbance estimation, we demonstrate through simulations that exo-sail induced control torque for CubeSat attitude maneuver is feasible.

Disturbance estimation↗
NASA NTRS1999

NASA Has Joined America True's Design Mission for 2000

Engineers at the NASA Lewis Research Center will support the America True design team led by America s Cup innovator Phil Kaiko. The joint effort between NASA and America True is encouraged by Mission HOME, the official public awareness campaign of the U.S. space community. NASA Lewis and America True have entered into a Space Act Agreement to focus on the interaction between the airfoil and the large deformation of the pretensioned sails and rigs along with the dynamic motions related to the boat motions. This work will require a coupled fluid and structural simulation. Included in the simulation will be both a steadystate capability, to capture the quasi-state interactions between the air loads and sail geometry and the lift and drag on the boat, and a transient capability, to capture the sail/mast pumping effects resulting from hull motions.

Steele, Gynelle C.↗
NASA NTRS2012

NASA's Next Solar Sail: Lessons Learned from NanoSail - D2

NanoSail-D2 unfurled January 17th, 2011 and commenced a nine month Low Earth Orbit path to reentry to evaluate a sail's capacity to deploy in space and deorbit satellites. The orbit was strongly affected by variables including but not limited to: initial attitude, orbit lighting, solar radiation pressure, aerodynamic drag, gravity, and Center of Pressure offsets. The effects of these variables were evaluated through a 3-DOF rigid body simulation. The sail experienced stability in orbits which were continuously lit, i.e. did not orbit behind Earth. Probable drag area experienced by the sail for the mission is also estimated from orbital data and compared to the attitude simulation results. Analysis focuses on sail behavior in full lighting conditions to establish the limits of the sails stability in full lighting. Solar radiation pressure, aerodynamic drag, and gravity torque effects are described. Lastly, a reasonable upper bound on the variation of the Center of Pressure from the geometric center of the sail plane is established. Each of these results contributes to the design requirements for future solar sails.

Katan, Chelsea↗
NASA NTRS2008

NanoSail-D: The First Flight Demonstration of Solar Sails for Nanosatellites

The NanoSail-D mission is currently scheduled for launch onboard a Falcon Launch Vehicle in the late June 2008 timeframe. The NanoSail-D, a CubeSat-class satellite, will consist of a sail subsystem stowed in a Cubesat 2U volume integrated with a CubeSat 1U volume bus provided by the NASA Ames Research Center (ARC). Shortly after deployment of the NanoSail-D from a Poly Picosatellite Orbital Deployer (P-POD) ejection system, the solar sail will deploy and mission operations will commence. This demonstration flight has two primary mission objectives: 1) to successfully stow and deploy the sail and 2) to demonstrate de-orbit functionality. Given a nearterm opportunity for launch, the project was met with the challenge of delivering the flight hardware in approximately six months, which required a significant constraint on flight system functionality. As a consequence, passive attitude stabilization will be achieved using permanent magnets to de-tumble and orient the body with the magnetic field lines and then rely on atmospheric drag to passively stabilize the sailcraft in an essentially maximum drag attitude. This paper will present an introduction to solar sail propulsion systems, overview the NanoSail-D spacecraft, describe the performance analysis for the passive attitude stabilization, and present a prediction of flight data results from the mission.

Whorton, Mark↗
NASA NTRS2009

NanoSail-D: A Solar Sail Demonstration Mission

During the past decade, within the United States, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) was heavily engaged in the development of revolutionary new technologies for in-space propulsion. One of the major in-space propulsion technologies developed was a solar sail propulsion system. Solar sail propulsion uses the solar radiation pressure exerted by the momentum transfer of reflected photons to generate a net force on a spacecraft. To date, solar sail propulsion systems have been designed for large spacecraft in the tens to hundreds of kilograms mass range. Recently, however, MSFC has been investigating the application of solar sails for small satellite propulsion. Likewise, NASA Ames Research Center (ARC) has been developing small spacecraft missions that have a need for amass-efficient means of satisfying deorbit requirements. Hence, a synergistic collaboration was established between these two NASA field Centers with the objective of conducting a flight demonstration of solar sail technologies for small satellites. The NanoSail-D mission flew onboard the ill-fated Falcon Rocket launched August 2, 2008, and, due to the failure of that rocket, never achieved orbit. The NanoSail-D flight spare is ready for flight and a suitable launch arrangement is being actively pursued. Both the original sailcraft and the flight spare are hereafter referred to as NanoSail-D. The sailcraft consists of a sail subsystem stowed in a three-element CubeSat. Shortly after deployment of the NanoSail-D, the solar sail will deploy and mission operations will commence. This demonstration flight has two primary technical objectives: (1) to successfully stow and deploy the sail and (2) to demonstrate deorbit functionality. Given a near-term opportunity for launch on Falcon, the project was given the challenge of delivering the flight hardware in 6 mo, which required a significant constraint on flight system functionality. As a consequence, passive attitude stabilization of the spacecraft will be achieved using permanent magnets to detumble and orient the body with the magnetic field lines and then rely on atmospheric drag to passively stabilize the sailcraft in an essentially maximum drag attitude. This paper will present an introduction to solar sail propulsion systems and an overview of the NanoSail-D spacecraft.

Johnson, Les↗