Newly Launched Solar Sail Poised to Unfurl in Low Earth Orbit

A brand new spacecraft may quickly be hovering via Earth’s orbit whereas gently being pushed by photons emitted from the Sun.

French aerospace firm Gama launched its Gama Alpha photo voltaic sail mission to check out photonic propulsion expertise, which retains spacecraft in orbit with out the necessity for gasoline. The Gama Alpha cubesat was loaded on board a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and lifted off on Tuesday morning from Space Launch Complex 40 at Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

As the corporate’s first photo voltaic sail mission, Gama Alpha is an preliminary check of its expertise. The cubesat is roughly the scale of a shoebox, whereas its giant photo voltaic sail is concerning the dimension of a tennis court docket. The plan is for the sail to unfurl in Earth orbit at an altitude of 340 miles (550 kilometers), according to an announcement by Gama. “The first phase will be commissioning the satellite, establishing communications and checking all the vital signs are good,” Jordan Culeux, Gama lead system engineer, mentioned within the assertion. “The second phase will be the sail deployment.”

Solar sails acquire photons from the Sun, inflicting small bursts of momentum that propel the spacecraft. As the photons hit the sails, the spacecraft is pushed farther away from the Sun. If a spacecraft is ready to surpass the drag from Earth’s ambiance, it may probably attain very excessive altitudes.

“In space, the Sun’s radiative pressure allows constant acceleration. The result? Missions that are 10 to 20 times less expensive and no longer limited by a fuel budget,” Andrew Nutter, Gama co-founder, mentioned within the assertion. “A solar sail is poetic, inherently sustainable, and dramatically lowers the cost of access to deep space or unstable orbits.”

The satellite tv for pc will enter right into a sluggish rotation as soon as its photo voltaic sail is deployed. The primary goal of the Gama Alpha mission is to display that a big sail could be deployed and managed by a small cubesat, along with accumulating flight information to enhance simulations of the photo voltaic sail expertise, in accordance with Gama.

Gama Alpha reached its orbit lower than two months after GentleSail 2, a pioneering photo voltaic sail mission, wiped out in Earth’s ambiance to finish its three-and-a-half 12 months mission. GentleSail 2 launched in 2019 to check managed photo voltaic crusing in Earth orbit, inspiring a brand new era of hovering spacecraft to comply with.

There are a number of different photo voltaic sail missions presently within the works, together with NASA’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail System to check out sail growth materials in Earth orbit (scheduled for launch someday this 12 months) and NASA’s Solar Cruiser (scheduled for a 2025 launch). NASA’s NEA Scout photo voltaic sail mission launched aboard Artemis 1 in November 2022, however the crew behind the mission has been unable to speak with it ever since.

Gama Alpha may even be adopted by a successor mission aptly named Gama Beta. For the follow-up mission, the principle goal can be to display sustained navigation from an altitude twice as excessive as its predecessor. Should its photo voltaic sail missions show profitable, the Gama firm is hoping to turn into a pioneer within the discipline with this distinctive, low-cost expertise.

“We are building the space transportation infrastructure of tomorrow,” Louis de Goüyon Matignon, Gama co-founder, mentioned within the assertion. “While companies today are focused on low Earth orbit, we have decided to look further afield and prepare for the space operations of the future.”

More: GentleSail 2, Pushed by Sunlight, Raises Its Orbit by 10,500 Feet in Just Two Weeks