Patent — available for licensing
SMART Solar Sail
A NASA invention available to explore as a licensing opportunity.
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.