Is diffraction the next best idea in solar-powered spacecraft design?
Diffractive sails are different. When light is diffracted through narrow openings rather than reflected over wide planes, it spreads out in different directions. On the diffractive sails, the team takes advantage of this property of light by using small gratings embedded onto the surface that can scatter light to where it’s needed, even if the sail is at a suboptimal angle or not directly facing the sun. This, in turn, allows the spacecraft to navigate more nimbly and efficiently.
Dubill likens the concept to actual boat sails. If you’re trying to steer into the wind with the equivalent of a reflective sail, you’d have to move it back and forth to go in the intended direction. If you have something more like a diffractive sail, you could use the force of the wind to blow you forward, while also hurtling straight into it.
“[This design] is the novel part. It’s more efficient and gets around previous lightsail issues,” Dubill says, adding that, in a small study they conducted, the team found that the technical effort to replace reflective lightsails with diffractive lightsails was “well worth it” and that “the benefits far outweigh the cost.”
Under Dubill’s direction, the team will improve the metallic material of their solar-ray collector and perform ground tests throughout the Phase III period. They are laying the groundwork, she says, to ultimately send a constellation of lightweight diffractive lightsails holding scientific instruments to orbit around the sun’s poles. While the NASA and European Solar Agency Solar Orbiter recently took“There’s a lot about the sun that we don’t know.
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