A Photonic Sail of Utmost Simplicity: The Ribbon

The structural overheads and mechanical challenges that severely limit the prevailing approach to solar sail engineering are overcome for diffractive sails with the simple ribbon architecture: a film strip in an inherently stable tilted orientation, with the payload at its rear end. Missions with spiral solar trajectories or orbit cranking such as Sun polar observer platforms will profoundly benefit from the consequent thrust efficiency and dramatically simplified design. The concept is introduced and some of the key aspects of its feasibility and expected performance are reviewed and assessed.