First Electric Sailing Workshop at ESA ESTEC
The first workshop on Electric Sailing was
held at ESA ESTEC on
Monday, May 19, 2008. The organiser from ESA side was Mr. Jose
Gonzalez del Amo, head of ESTEC Electric Propulsion Section.
Location:
-
Escape Danceroom, ESA ESTEC, The Netherlands.
Outcome of the workshop
The workshop was successful and all the participants contributed to
the discussions. The participants and ESA agreed on the following
outcome.
- ESA and the rest of the participants consider that the maturity
level of the concept is good enough to conclude that there is no show
stopper regarding the physics or the technology.
- Engineering issues that should be addressed
in more detail are:
- manufacture and quality control of the tether
- deployment and control of the tethers
- high voltage electron gun
- ESA representatives feel that the technology is very useful for
deep space missions requiring high delta-v, for example the
interstellar heliopause mission.
All the participants encourage the consortium led by FMI to push for a
flight experiment.
Detailed programme and presentations
Created: May 26, 2008
Latest updated: May 26, 2008
More information about electric sail
More information about inventor Pekka Janhunen, firstname.lastname@fmi.fi