Abstract
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched the solar power sail orbiter ‘Interplanetary Kite-craft Accelerated by Radiation Of the Sun: IKAROS’, on May 21st, 2010. IKAROS was launched by H-IIA 17th vehicle dual-launched with ‘Venus Climate Orbiter: AKATSUKI’. IKAROS demonstrates a new propulsion technology of utilizing photons from the sun for deep space exploration, which is called the Solar Power Sail technology. In a case of the solar system exploration, an ion-propulsion engine is effective as a main propulsion system because it has high specific impulse and it can provide a continuous acceleration. However, the ion-engine needs high electric power in proportion to its performance. The solar power sail technology we developed can be a hybrid engine, which can provide high electric power generated by very thin flexible solar arrays attached on the solar sail, while obtaining acceleration generated on the solar sail by the sun radiation. IKAROS succeeded in deploying the solar power sail in an interplanetary orbit, on June 9th, 2010 for the first time in the world, and we obtained various flight data of the solar power sail deployment mission. We report the details of the on-orbit result of IKAROS’s solar power sail deployment mission and the result of numerical simulation compared with the flight data.
