Backstory
It was the evening of November 13, 2023. I was on my way back from Houston after a design team showcase with my friends on Team Vestigo. At that point, I was the Outreach Director for SEDS, and we didn't have any teams yet. So there I was, sitting in the car, trying to think of something cool that we could do. Not another rocket, or a CubeSat, like countless other teams were already doing, but something new. Something truly innovative.
All of a sudden, an idea popped into my brain. We could do a solar sail! So I pulled out my phone and started researching. Could we really do it? Maybe, I decided. But it was a big maybe, so I shelved the idea and went on with my life.
Fast forward to January 19, 2024. I was flying back to Texas (after being stranded in Buffalo for a couple days due to a snowstorm) when I came across this article. It was a fascinating Q&A with a team at UC Berkeley working on small solar sails, but there was one sentence in particular that really caught my eye: "If we do everything right, the cost of the solar sails will be a thousand dollars or less." A thousand dollars!? Now that was something we could work with.
Of course, I knew development costs would be significantly higher than that. And I knew there was still plenty of research to be done before we could really determine if a solar sail project was feasible. However, it was a promising start. So when the time was right, I decided to start up a team.
Research Team
And that leads us to today. As of September 22, 2024, the SEDS Solar Sail research team is officially up and running, with myself as one of the Project Managers. We are currently working to identify a feasible, solar sail technology demonstration mission for SEDS to execute, and we have some high hopes for the project. More updates to come.
