Image courtesy of NASA
This image depicts a NASA style square solar sail that was originally planned for rendezvous with Haley's Comet and looking much like the one that will be used to carry the scientific payload in the Interstellar Probe Mission except that the Interstellar Probe is tentatively planned to be a hexagonal shape.
At almost 250 AU(AU=the distance from the Earth to the Sun) a spacecraft would be zooming beyond the solar system and into interstellar space. Scientists expect this rendezvous with the termination shock at any point and are eager to study its effects on the spacecraft. The problem is the Voyager Spacecraft was not designed for this purpose and the data scientists can gather is very limited. Case in point the Interstellar Probe, tentatively planned for a 2010 mission will ride a hexagonal sail to .25 AU from the Sun to gain a boost from the increased photons, then aim through the nose of the heliosphere where the distance to the interstellar medium is the shortest. The antenna dish will double as the spacecraft's main support structure and is limited to 2.7 m to fit inside the confines of a Delta 2 launch vehicle.* Instruments will be placed around the 2.7 m dish antenna and will downlink their data via the Deep Space Network.* Made of a fine carbon Mesh with a reflective coating the solar sail will be able to resist the intense radiation and heat as it travels to it's closest proximity to the Sun. Other materials have been designed for solar sails, such as mylar, but mylar is made of plastic which is not resistant to intense heat. The goal in the Probes 30-year mission is to reach between 200 and 400 astronomical units which amounts to 200 to 400 times the average distance of the Earth to the Sun.
With a host of instruments that promise to be far more superior than the Voyagers the Interstellar Probe hopes to explore these stated goals:*
The scientific payload will consist of a solar wind and interstellar ion and electron detector, a spectrometer to measure the elemental and isotopic composition of pickup and interstellar ions an interstellar neutral atom spectrometer and a detector for suprathermal ions and electrons. Cosmic ray instruments are included, one for Hydrogen, Helium, electrons and positrons, and one to measure the energy spectra and composition of heavier anomalous and galactic cosmic rays. A magnetometer will make the first direct measurements of the magnetic fields in the interstellar medium. Finally a plasma and radio wave detector will measure fluctuations in the electric and magnetic fields created by plasma processes and by interactions and instabilities in the heliospheric boundaries and beyond.* Cont. . .1 2 3
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