Research Status of Sail Propulsion using the Solar Wind

A spacecraft propulsion system utilizing the energy of the solar wind was reviewed. The first plasma sail concept was proposed by Prof. Winglee in 2000, and that was called M2P2(mini-magnetospheric plasmapropulsion). However, the first M2P2 design adopting a small(20-cm-diamter) coil and a small helicon plasma source design was criticized by Dr. Khazanov in 2003. He insisted that: 1) MHD is not an appropriate approximation to describe the M2P2 design by Winglee, and with ion kinetic simulation, it was shown that the M2P2 design could provide only negligible thrust; 2) considerably larger sails(than that Winglee proposed) would be required to tap the energy of the solar wind. We started our plasma ssail study in 2003, and it is shown that moderately sized magnetic sails can produce sub-Newton-class thrust in the ion inertial scale(${\sim}70$ km). Currently, we are continuing our efforts to make a feasibly sized plasma sail(Magnetoplasma sail) by optimizing the magnetic field inflation process Winglee proposed.