Two-Way Shape Memory Effect Driven Solar Sails for Active Solar Radiation Pressure Modulation

Solar sailing has proven to be an effective solution for cost-effective and long-term space missions due to its fuel-free propulsion. While multiple large-scale solar sails based on kilogram-class satellites have been developed and tested in space, solar sails created for lightweight chip-scale satellites are much less. To enable the gram-class satellite of solar sailing for active attitude adjustment and orbital maneuvers, a novel solar sail driven by two-way shape memory effect (TWSME) was proposed in this work. The solar sail base was made of rectangular Al-Kapton thin films, while a U-shaped NiTi beam was developed by 50 μm thin Ni50.6Ti49.4 foils. Both of the U-shaped NiTi beam and rectangular Al-Kapton thin films were manufactured by the ultra-fast femtosecond laser cutting machine. Finite element modeling of single U-shaped NiTi beam and assembled solar sail were built to validate that an 80 mm-long TWSME NiTi beam with a curvature of 37.31 m−1 were sufficient to drive the solar sail for solar radiation pressure modulation. A solar sail prototype was developed, and an in situ experiment test of the prototype was conducted with infrared imaging, showing efficient bending behaviors by application of a 0.5 A direct current across the U-shape NiTi beam. These findings reveal that U-shaped TWSME NiTi foils provide an effective driving strategy for lightweight chip-scale satellites, and thus dramatically broaden the space application of the gram-scale satellite.