Electric Sail Tether Deployment System for CubeSats

Abstract: An Electric Sail (E-Sail) propulsion system consists of long, thin tethers – positively-charged wires extending radially and symmetrically outward from a spacecraft. Tethers must be biased using a high-voltage power supply to ensure that the solar wind produces thrust. While the E-Sail concept shows great promise for flying heliopause missions with higher characteristic acceleration than solar sails, there are significant technical challenges related to deploying and controlling multiple teth…