Dynamically stable radiation pressure propulsion of flexible lightsails for interstellar exploration
Abstract
Meter-scale, submicron-thick lightsail spacecraft, propelled to relativistic velocities via photon pressure using high-power density laser radiation, offer a potentially new route to space exploration within and beyond the solar system, posing substantial challenges for materials science and engineering. We analyze the structural and photonic design of flexible lightsails by developing a mesh-based multiphysics simulator based on linear elastic theory. We observe spin-stabilized flexible lightsail shapes and designs that are immune to shape collapse during acceleration and exhibit beam-riding stability despite deformations caused by photon pressure and thermal expansion. Excitingly, nanophotonic lightsails based on planar silicon nitride membranes patterned with suitable optical metagratings exhibit both mechanically and dynamically stable propulsion along the pump laser axis. These advances suggest that laser-driven acceleration of membrane-like lightsails to the relativistic speeds needed to access interstellar distances is conceptually feasible, and that their fabrication could be achieved by scaling up modern microfabrication technology.
Copyright and License
© The Author(s) 2024. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Acknowledgement
The authors acknowledge helpful discussions with James Benford, Victor Brar, Artur Davoyan, Ognjen Ilic, Phillip Jahelka, Adrien Merkt, Lior Michaeli, John Sader, Cora Wyent, and Joeson Wong. We thank Zachary Manchester for insights on numerical techniques and guidance with the Floquet stability analysis. Funding was provided by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under grant FA2386-18-1-4095 (R.G., M.D.K., and H.A.A.) and the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative (R.G., M.D.K., and H.A.A.).
Contributions
These authors contributed equally: Ramon Gao, Michael D. Kelzenberg.
R.G. performed the electromagnetic simulations of the metagrating designs and studied the self-stabilizing properties of flat lightsails. M.D.K. developed the flexible mesh simulator, investigated materials and structural stability, and studied the curved lightsail shapes. H.A.A. supervised the investigation. All authors participated in drafting and reviewing the manuscript.
Data Availability
The relevant data of this study are included in the paper and Supplementary Information file, and raw data are available from the corresponding author upon request.
Code Availability
The MATLAB code for this study has been made available on GitHub at https://github.com/Starshot-Lightsail.
Conflict of Interest
The authors declare no competing interests.
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Additional details
- PMCID
- PMC11101440
- United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- FA2386-18-1-4095
- Breakthrough Foundation