Inherently Stiff Membranes with Shape Memory

Solar sails that have the inherent stiffness to greatly reduce or eliminate the need for tensioning while retaining low areal densities and compact stowage offer enabling capability for multiple missions in the Sun-Earth Connection Space Science theme. Polyimide film materials that are resistant to the space environment will be used to demonstrate and quantify the effectiveness of novel structural design and manufacturing approaches to produce scalable solar sails with areal densities below 15 g/m2. The benefits of this scalable technology to different sail designs including square riggers, heliogyros, and disks will be analyzed and quantified in terms of mass reduction and performance improvement. Alternate polyimide materials with higher surface smoothness and lower coefficients of thermal expansion will be evaluated using the new design and manufacturing approaches.