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Completed TRL 2 (started at 1, targeting 2)
Understanding the beginnings of the Universe and life itself is NASA’s long term vision and one of humanities’ grand challenges. Missions to the edge of our solar system and to space between stars in our galaxy – the interstellar medium – are of a great promise to shed light on these questions. However, today’s deep space exploration is hindered by fundamental limitations of current propulsion technology, resulting in missions that take decades of development, years of flight and cost billions. Extreme metamaterial solar sails as proposed here have the potential to shift the paradigm of space exploration enabling numerous low cost and high speed missions to be launched anytime and anywhere. Such sails could gain accelerations >60AU/yr when coupled to low mass spacecraft and dive to extreme proximity to the sun (just 2-5 solar radii). This velocity is 20 times more than Voyager 1. This NIAC study challenges the limits of materials, paving the way for development of high endurance ultra-thin film architectures that can handle extreme environments manifested by solar radiation and plasma in addition to providing spacecraft control. Our technology enables reaching Jupiter in 5 months, Neptune in 10, surpassing Voyager 1 in 2.5 years and getting to the solar gravity lens location in just 8.5 years.
Current deep space missions are slow and expensive. Our sail-crafts are >20 times faster and cheaper. Our sail technology will yield novel spacecraft design and CONOPS, enabling distributed deep space missions, constellations & assembly of large structures. Beyond solar sail technology, our extreme metamaterials will find use for ultralight space structures and for in-space power and thermal management. The concepts and findings of our work will find use in plasma resilient materials, high temperature coatings, and radiative heat damping.
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This is early/mid-stage (TRL 2) — the most realistic path in is NASA SBIR/STTR, which funds small businesses and research institutions to develop technology aligned with NASA's needs (equity-free, phased funding). Check whether a current SBIR/STTR solicitation topic overlaps with this project's technology area, or contact the project directly (above) to ask.
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