NASA Begins Testing of Revolutionary E-Sail Technology

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“The same concerns don’t apply to the protons in the solar wind,” he said. “With the continuous flow of protons, and the increased area, the E-Sail will continue to accelerate to 16-20 AU -- at least three times farther than the solar sail. This will create much higher speeds.”

In 2012, NASA’s Voyager 1 became the first spacecraft to ever cross the heliopause and reach interstellar space. Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 took almost 35 years to make its 121 AU journey. The goal of HERTS is to develop an E-Sail that could make the same journey in less than one-third that time.

“Our investigation has shown that an interstellar probe mission propelled by an E-Sail could travel to the heliopause in just under 10 years,” he said. “This could revolutionize the scientific returns of these types of missions.”

The HERTS E-Sail concept development and testing is funded by NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate through the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts Program, which encourages visionary ideas that could transform future missions with the creation of radically better or entirely new aerospace concepts. NIAC projects study innovative, technically credible, advanced concepts that could one day "change the possible" in aerospace.

Selected as a Phase II NIAC Fellow in 2015, the HERTS team was awarded an additional $500,000 to further test the E-Sail and possibly change not only the way NASA travels to the heliopause, but also within our solar system.

“As the team studied this concept, it became clear that the design is flexible and adaptable,” said Wiegmann. “Mission and vehicle designers can trade off wire length, number of wires and voltage levels to fit their needs -- inner planetary, outer planetary or heliopause. The E-Sail is very scalable.”

Steering can be accomplished by modulating the wire’s voltage individually as the spacecraft rotates. Affecting a difference in force applied on different portions of the E-Sail, would give engineers the ability to steer the spacecraft, similar to the sails of a boat.

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