A Reflective Photon Solar Sail for Heliocentric Cruise: Acceleration and Transfer-Time Budgets

This study sizes the system named in its title from stated physical relations and a stated operating basis, and reports the result as SIMULATED, NOT MEASURED. The operating principle is photon pressure on a large reflective membrane providing continuous low acceleration. The sail craft is a civilian heliophysics research vehicle intended to measure the solar wind and magnetic field during a heliocentric cruise; it carries no payload other than scientific instruments. Every performance figure is computed by the deposited script from its inputs rather than asserted, and the headline outcomes include effective radiation pressure after reflectivity and obliquity of 7.1 micronewtons per square metre; total photon thrust at one astronomical unit of 0.0859 newtons; characteristic acceleration at one astronomical unit of 0.4697 millimetres per second squared; velocity accumulated in one year at constant one-unit acceleration of 1.48e+04 metres per second. Mass, power, time and energy budgets are assembled from components so they can be audited line by line, off-design behaviour is discussed openly, and the limits of the sizing are stated in full. The design is presented as a civilian system throughout, with its governing constraint identified and quantified rather than merely encountered.