A Brane Craft is a membrane spacecraft with solar cells, command and control electronics, communications systems, antennas, propulsion systems, attitude and proximity sensors, and shape control actuators as thin film structures manufactured on ~10 micron thick plastic sheets. This revolutionary spacecraft design can have a thickness of tens of microns with a surface area of
square meters to maximize area-to-mass ratios for exceptionally low-mass spacecraft. Communications satellites, solar power satellites, solar electric propulsion stages, and solar sails can benefit from Brane Craft design. It also enables new missions that require low-mass spacecraft with exceptionally high delta-V. Active removal of orbital debris from Earth orbit is the target application for this study.
This post was published on January 14, 2020 1:47 pm
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