Stability of spinning solar sail-craft containing a huge membrane

Abstract

Solar sails are the spacecraft that are propelled by sunlight. The Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) of Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has studied the solar sails which are spinning and deployed by centrifugal force. One of the technological difficulties to be realized is how to design the spanned spinning solar sails to maintain the stability while those huge membranes unfurl with deformation and oscillation. In this paper, an attention is focused on the out-of-plane oscillation and an analysis is presented about the dynamics so that the characteristic parameters are identified as for the stability of those spinning solar sails. Show more