Their primary source of inspiration? The albatross.
The team of scientists, led by Mathias N. Larrouturou, a spaceflight researcher at McGill University, acknowledged thatto faster space travel, such as solar sails, are currently under study. Ideas of magnetic, electric, and plasma magnet sails have also been proposed. In the current study, however, researchers look at employing dynamic soaring sails to power a space vehicle.
"Drawing inspiration from maneuvers practiced by seabirds and RC glider pilots, we show that a flight vehicle interacting with two different regions of wind can extract energy from the wind shear and accelerate to speeds greater than the wind," the teamThe scientists look into dynamic soaring - flying lifting trajectories that "bounce back and forth between the different regions of wind speed, like a tennis ball bouncing back and forth between two approaching trains.
This wing could be produced by using a plasma wave antenna made of two plasma magnets. The field created by the magnets could interact with the solar wind flows in different directions, thereby creating lift."A physical wing would be impractically heavy, so instead, we expand upon Jeff Greason's idea of extracting power from the flow of plasma blowing over the vehicle. In this new paper, we push the idea one step further and eliminate using propellant entirely.
"Development of the concept of interacting with the solar wind as a means of propulsion will require experimental validation in stages, the first of which would be a demonstration of significant drag against the"The plasma magnet appears to be the highest performing in terms of accelerations of the drag concepts reviewed in the Introduction, so a plasma magnet technology demonstration would appear to be the next logical step.
that could transit the orbit of Jupiter just six months after launch from Earth and another application of the wind-riding plasma magnet technology calledThese groundbreaking missions would provide validation that meaningful propulsive power could be extracted from the solar wind, providing a foundation for the more advanced concept of extracting electrical power from the wind for lift generation," the scientists added.
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