Near Term Mission Applications for Solar Sails

Colin McInnes
University of Glasgow, Scotland

Near term exploitation of solar sailing will rely on the identification of compelling mission concepts which require solar sails with only a relatively modest performance. While large-scale, high performance missions provide motivation for technology development, they are unlikely to reach flight status without incremental steps in technology development and validation. This talk will present a range of near-term missions for low performance solar sails which are enabled by solar sailing, and which can provide a useful validation pathway to more advanced future missions. In addition, ESA solar sail activities will be discussed, including a possible LEO deployment test in 2002.