PIONEER ASTRONAUTICS — National Aeronautics and Space Administration SBIR Phase I: Z8

Description

The magnetic sail, or magsail, is a new technology that can be used for deorbiting spacecraft. In the magsail deorbiting system, a loop of aluminum or copper wire is deployed at the end of life of an Earth orbiting spacecraft, and energized with an electric current, producing a magnetic field. The magnetic field forces the wire into a circular loop, and creates a small magnetosphere around the spacecraft. This magnetosphere in tern then creates drag against the ambient plasma surrounding the Earth, causing the spacecraft to deorbit. For typical configurations, the magsail wire mass required to create a drag area of a given size is two orders of magnitude less than that needed using solar sail or any other physical material. In addition to being a uniquely advantageous technology for LEO spacecraft deorbiting, the normal-conducting magsail can serve as a precursor technology to superconducting magsails capable of generating sufficient field to effectively propel interplanetary spacecraft using the momentum flux of the solar wind. In the proposed program, the potential performance of the magsail deorbiting system will be analyzed, design options compared, deployment and operation simulated, and the concept validated by means of computer analysis and laboratory tests.nbsp;