Extreme solar sailing for fast transit exploration of solar system and interstellar medium

View Video Presentation: https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2021-4227.vid Past 60 years of space exploration have led to fascinating discoveries across many different branches of science and technology. However, further progress requires new revolutionary approaches to in-space propulsion for fast transit across the solar system and beyond. Here, we describe a concept of an extreme solar sailing, in which we show that solar sails by making use of a powered slingshot at an extreme proximity to the surface of the sun, just 2-5 solar radii of it can be accelerated to >60 AU/yr (>300 km/s or 0.1% speed of light).