Electric sail, photonic sail and deorbiting applications of the freely guided photonic blade

• We introduce a generic concept (FGPB) for multiple purposes in propellantless propulsion.
• FGPB can be used in electric solar wind sail and novel type of heliogyro sail.
• FGPB can also be used for scaling up Coulombic plasma brake concept for deorbiting.
• As well it can be used for atmospheric drag deorbiting.
• We point out a way of inexpensive and straightforward demonstration of FGPB on ground and in space.

We consider a freely guided photonic blade (FGPB) which is a centrifugally stretched sheet of photonic sail membrane that can be tilted by changing the centre of mass or by other means. The FGPB can be installed at the tip of each main tether of an electric solar wind sail (E-sail) so that one can actively manage the tethers to avoid their mutual collisions and to modify the spin rate of the sail if needed. This enables a more scalable and modular E-sail than the baseline approach where auxiliary tethers are used for collision avoidance. For purely photonic sail applications one can remove the tethers and increase the size of the blades to obtain a novel variant of the heliogyro that can have a significantly higher packing density than the traditional heliogyro. For satellite deorbiting in low Earth orbit (LEO) conditions, analogous designs exist where the E-sail effect is replaced by the negative polarity plasma brake effect and the photonic pressure by atmospheric drag. We conclude that the FGPB appears to be an enabling technique for diverse applications. We also outline a way of demonstrating it on ground and in LEO at low cost.