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Issued patent

SMART Solar Sail

An issued NASA patent from the Technology Transfer catalog.

View at technology.nasa.gov
Media from NASA Technology Transfer

About this technology

Overview

NASA GSFCs SMART (Super Miniaturized Autonomous Reconfigurable Technology) Solar Sail is a deployable, fully autonomous, solar sail for use in a very fine station keeping of a spacecraft. The solar sail would be highly deformable from an initially highly compressed configuration, yet also capable of enabling very fine maneuvering of the spacecraft by means of small sail-surface deformations. The SMART Solar Sail would be connected to the main body of the spacecraft by a SMART multi-tether structure, which would include microelectromechanical system (MEMS) actuators like those of the frame plus tethers in the form of longer versions of the struts in the frame.