SETI bioastro: Solar Sail Mission to a Binary Planetoid

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To quote:

For the asteroid mission, DLR now ponders a larger sail. Bernd Dachwald and
colleagues, writing from DLR’s Institute of Space Simulation, provide an
overview of such a sail in a recent paper, saying “…we consider a (70 m)²
solar sail with a specific weight of about 20 g/m² to be a realistic,
however still ambitious, near-term development goal.” Using such a craft,
the authors believe it possible to return a sample from the NEA 1996FG3
within ten years of launch. The spacecraft would hold a payload of 300 kg
including lander and return capsule (but excluding the sail assembly).

This mission, tagged ENEAS by its designers, focuses on 1996FG3 because of
its scientific interest as well as its relatively accessible orbit. This NEA
is a binary, with the primary body 1.4 kilometers in diameter and the
secondary about a third of that. Getting to it involves, for the sake of
time, a direct insertion into an interplanetary trajectory, after which the
sail is deployed and oriented to follow the mission profile. At the NEA, the
craft will hover in the hemisphere opposite the Sun, studying its
gravitational field and deploying the lander and integrated return capsule.

Full article here:

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=1096

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