Latest article by Christian Bianchi in collaboration with friends at
U. of Pisa:
"Preliminary design of a space debris removal mission in LEO using a solar sail"
We show how a solar sail could be used as a shuttle to collect and deorbit debris objects of moderate size, multiple times. The sail exploits the combined effect of solar radiation pressure and atmospheric forces.
While SpaceX is working on Starship to carry huge payloads to Mars, the fastest flight times could be accomplished with solar sails. A new paper suggests that a 1 kg payload with a 100 square meter solar sail could reach 65 km/s relative to Mars. They could blast out of the solar system going 109 km/s, and if it's first directed towards the Sun, they could reach 148 km/s, getting to the heliopause in just 4.2 years. This opens up a range of possible missions, like the outer planets, interstellar space, and the solar gravitational lens.
BLISS ([University of California] Berkeley Low-cost Interplanetary Solar Sail) is a proposal to use smartphone and other consumer miniaturization tech to build a swarm of small solar sails acting in concert to explore the Solar System. Attached to each sail would be a low-cost, lightweight (~10g), Linux-powered spacecraft. Possible missions include visits to NEOs and sample returns from comets.