Ibadan, 20 September 2024. – The solar sail aboard NASA‘s Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3) satellite has successfully deployed, using a spacecraft bus from Kongsberg NanoAvionics (NanoAvionics). Telemetry and images from the satellite’s onboard camera confirmed the deployment, which was a primary objective of the ACS3 mission.
The ACS3 mission, which NASA’s Ames Research Center led and operated, is a technology demonstration to test an 860-square-foot (80-square-meter) solar sail and new deployable composite boom technologies for future space missions. This propulsion method harnesses the pressure of sunlight on large reflective polymer sheets, consequently offering a potential new way of propelling small satellites on long-duration missions without requiring traditional propellants.
Furthermore, the composite booms may also help build complex structures on the Moon or Mars, such as trusses for communications towers, surface shelters like hangars or very long antennas for rovers. NanoAvionics contributed to this mission by designing and manufacturing the 12U nanosatellite bus, which serves as the testbed for NASA’s solar sail technology.
With NanoAvionics support, NASA integrated the solar sail and other mission components into the satellite bus and has been managing the satellite’s operations. Data from the solar sail deployment will consequently support the advancement of the in-space propulsion technology. Likewise, the following mission steps will re-engage the spacecraft’s attitude control system that was put idle just before the deployment of the booms as part of the planned deployment sequence.
After that, NASA’s mission operators will test the maneuvering capabilities of the sail in space. Likewise, raising and lowering the orbit of the ACS3 spacecraft will provide valuable information that may help guide future concepts of operations and designs for solar sail-equipped science and exploration missions.