Overview
TAMU SSS (SEDS Solar Sail) is an independent project that I founded in September 2024 to launch the first student-led solar sail mission into orbit. Since then, I have served as a Co-Project Manager, leading the team to conduct research, expert outreach, mission design, and R&D of a novel sail deployment system using SMAs (shape memory alloys).
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 work to be done before we could really determine if a solar sail project was feasible. However, it was a promising start. So I decided to form a team in September 2024, and we got to work.
The Project
For the first two semesters, we conducted in-depth research and expert outreach to explore different mission concepts and identify the most feasible one for us to pursue. I knew that high-level research projects like this were notoriously difficult to keep on track, so I tried my best to set clear expectations & milestones, keep members accountable, and continuously engage them with the long-term vision of the project.
We still faced our fair share of challenges and lack of participation from members, but nevertheless, I was able to keep the team on schedule and execute our plan successfully. By May 2025, we had selected our mission concept – demonstrating a novel, SMA-based sail deployment system.
This semester, I have been working to get design work underway, shifting the team’s focus to mission design and R&D of our deployment system. I have also started my own research, under the supervision of Dr. Darren Hartl, to create a thermomechanical analysis tool that can simulate in-space deployment of shape memory alloy-actuated structures by integrating Abaqus with an external tool. This, of course, will be very useful for the design & development of our solar sail deployment system, but also for space deployable structures in general.
