Abstract
Solar sails offer potential for future space flight without the need for added fuel. Science has nearly reached the limits of the chemical effectiveness of rocket fuel and long term and deep space missions will require an alternate propellant. Solar sails solve this need without adding mass, thereby allowing more scientific payload. Applications have been limited mostly to orbits of Earth and analysis has been done as a rigid body. For long term missions, particularly including a rendezvous with other bodies, a high degree of accuracy is necessary, and as such, flexible analysis will be needed. A sail was analyzed in a solar orbit at 1 AU sufficiently far from Earth to avoid gravitational pull. Finite element modeling was used for a square sail, a design primarily used in current applications, with the payload concentrated at the center of the sail. A very small amount of deformation was seen symmetric about the center, resembling a wide bowl. This decreased slightly the effective area of the sail and thus lowered the acceleration. The tension in the sail material was varied while all other variables were kept constant. For the initial value of tension, a 26% difference in acceleration for the flexible analysis was observed. The values observed indicate that a flexible analysis of the sail will be required to accurately project a long-term trajectory of a deep-space solar sail. Potential applications include reaching the Kuiper Belt in as little as six years and reaching the Oort cloud within our lifetime.