NASA STTR 2002-II Solicitation

SMALL BUSINESS CONCERN (SBC):		RESEARCH INSTITUTION (RI):
NAME:	CU Aerospace LLC	NAME:	University of Illinois, U-C
ADDRESS:	60 Hazelwood Dr.	ADDRESS:	306 Talbot Lab/104 S. Wright St.
CITY:	Champaign	CITY:	Urbana
STATE/ZIP:	IL   61820 -7460	STATE/ZIP:	IL   61801 -2935
PHONE:	(217 ) 333 -8274	PHONE:	(217 ) 333 -0678

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/ PROJECT MANAGER:	Victoria Coverstone / David Carroll
U.S. Citizen or Permanent Resident:	Y

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (LIMIT 200 WORDS)
UltraSail, proposed by a team of CU Aerospace, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, SRS Technologies, and VACCO Industries, is a next-generation high-risk, high-payoff sail system for the launch, deployment, stabilization and control of very large (km^2 class) solar sails enabling high payload mass fractions for interplanetary and deep space spacecraft. UltraSail is an innovative, non-traditional approach to propulsion technology achieved by combining propulsion and control systems developed for formation-flying microsatellites with an innovative solar sail architecture to achieve controllable sail areas approaching 1 km^2, sail subsystem area densities approaching 1 g/m^2, and thrust levels many times those of ion thrusters used for comparable deep space missions. UltraSail can achieve outer planetary rendezvous, a deep space capability now reserved for high-mass nuclear and chemical systems. The primary innovation presented in Phase I was the near-elimination of sail supporting structures by attaching each blade tip to a formation-flying microsatellite which deploys the sail, and then articulates the sail to provide attitude control, including spin stabilization and precession of the spin axis. These tip microsatellites are controlled by a 3-axis microthruster metrology system to control sail film deployment.

POTENTIAL COMMERCIAL APPLICATION(S) (LIMIT 150 WORDS)
UltraSail may have military applications for earth-observing missions at high orbit where stationary observing is useful ? e.g. pole-sitting missions. Also, NOAA and NSF have strong interests in the science that can be returned using sails in non-Keplerian orbits.

POTENTIAL NASA APPLICATION(S) (LIMIT 150 WORDS)
UltraSail is potentially useful for a range of robotic missions ranging from Sun-Earth Lagrange point L1 to Mars to the Kuiper Belt. An attractive application is an outer planet mission such as a Titan orbiter. Initial results indicate that high payload mass fractions are achievable.