Invited article: Electric solar wind sail: toward test missions.

The electric solar wind sail (E-sail) is a space propulsion concept that uses the natural solar wind dynamic pressure for producing spacecraft thrust. In its baseline form, the E-sail consists of a number of long, thin, conducting, and centrifugally stretched tethers, which are kept in a high positive potential by an onboard electron gun. The concept gains its efficiency from the fact that the effective sail area, i.e., the potential structure of the tethers, can be millions of times larger than the physical area of the thin tethers wires, which offsets the fact that the dynamic pressure of the solar wind is very weak. Indeed, according to the most recent published estimates, an E-sail of 1 N thrust and 100 kg mass could be built in the rather near future, providing a revolutionary level of propulsive performance (specific acceleration) for travel in the solar system. Here we give a review of the ongoing technical development work of the E-sail, covering tether construction, overall mechanical design alternatives, guidance and navigation strategies, and dynamical and orbital simulations.

X-cut miniature tuning forks realized by ion track lithography.

With the recently developed ion track lithography based on the selective etching, widening, and merging of ion-induced defects collectively resembling a superimposed anisotropy in certain areas as defined by a stencil mask, 39-kHz x-cut miniature tuning forks with a tine size of 331x2, 500x42 mum and a Q-value of up to 42 000 were fabricated from single crystalline quartz mostly to demonstrate this new technique's ability to structure difficult cuts, but also to benefit from the much simpler electrode configuration possible with this cut in comparison with ordinary z-cut watch tuning forks.

Residual stress in sputtered gold films on quartz measured by the cantilever beam deflection technique.

With resonator applications in mind, the residual stress in sputtered gold electrodes on quartz has been investigated with respect to various deposition rates (2, 10, and 50 A/s), pressures (1.0 and 3.0 10(-3) mbar), deposition temperatures (80 degrees C and room temperature (RT)), film thicknesses (approx. 400 to 800 A), and substrate smoothnesses (lapped and polished), using the cantilever beam deflection method. Samples were monitored for 4 weeks at room temperature followed by 13 weeks of annealing at 85 degrees C. The initial stress (ranging from -180 to -60 MPa) was compressive for all samples but turned tensile (a few megaPascals) in some of the samples after annealing. A significant decrease in initial compressive stress appeared with samples coated at an elevated temperature. From samples prepared at lower pressure and differing only in film thickness and substrate roughness, an increased compressive stress was found in thicker films and on rougher surfaces. The stress relaxation has been fitted to an exponential expression, and an attempt to relate the stress to a frequency shift (typically a few parts per million for ordinary, 100-mum thick AT blanks) has been made. With the help of transmission electron microscopy (TEM) the film morphology was investigated and related to the deposition parameters and aging. Judging from the increase in compressive stress and grain refinement with increased deposition rate and decreased pressure, the atomic peening mechanism is the most likely reason for the induced stress. Rutherford backscattering spectrometry (RBS) was employed to rule out the inclusion of argon (below or around 0.5%) as an explanation. From the vague, but clearly discernible, trend toward faster RT stress relaxation with higher initial stress, together with the finer film morphology, the relief mechanism is believed to be stress-promoted grain boundary diffusion.