Completely stripped solar sail concept using bi-stable reeled composite booms

The Surrey Space Centre is currently working on CubeSail, a 5 x 5 m(2) nano-solar sail spacecraft to be fitted inside a 3U Cubesat platform. The CubeSail mission has a two-fold aim: first, to demonstrate the concept of solar sailing using a 3-axis stabilized sail and second, to demonstrate the potential use of its large membrane as a drag augmentation device for de-orbiting satellites and launch vehicles' upper stages in low Earth orbit (LEO). The novel solar sail concept presented here is a result of the highly restrictive area-to-mass ratio and volume constraints imposed by the mission requirements. Therefore, this concept can be readily scaled up to produce future very high performance sailcrafts. Research on ultra-lightweight deployable structures leads to the invention of a new bi-stable composite boom that entails a light and simple deployment subsystem. This simplicity is the key feature that enables the sail to be attached along the length of the booms, thus reducing the structural mass requirement of these support structures. In the completely stripped sail concept the previously considered square or quadrant membrane is split into a set of parallel strips, in order to achieve a uniaxial tension state in the film. Also, a test-bed created for the successful deployment under gravity conditions of the 5 m(2) prototype sail is presented. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.