De-orbiting satellites in LEO using solar sails

Abstract

Solar sailing is one of the most promising propulsion technologies for future scientific space missions. Although many studies have been performed on solar sails performances and possible applications, successful deploy and use of solar sails in space has been possible only recently, due to the high technological skills and risks involved in developing, packaging and unfolding the sail’s booms and the membrane. Hence, the possibility of testing hardware solutions and implementations in space is a key point in order to successfully deploy and operate a solar sail mission in space. In this paper, the use of solar sails as devices to speed up the de-orbiting of LEO objects is considered and the advantage of such approach in the wider context of solar sail development and implementation is discussed.