Duke Solar Sail Team

What is a solar sail?

A solar sail is a lightweight, reflective membrane-based satellite that uses the pressure of sunlight to propel itself. As light particles, called photons, reflect off the sail, they transfer momentum and produce a small thrust without consuming propellant.

Earth Cup and our goal

Duke University's solar sail engineering team is in collaboration with Earth Cup, an international engineering competition focused on advancing solar sail technology.
We are competing in the Race 1 competition, where teams design and build small sailcrafts for operation in low Earth orbit, demonstrating capabilities such as spacecraft control, communications, and solar radiation pressure. Our goal is to launch our solar sail in Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO) and remain for as long as possible in orbit, downlinking inertial and telemetric data. The competition supports a broader effort to develop technologies for future space exploration and investigate space-based sunshades as a potential approach to reducing Earth’s warming. Earth Cup defines a standard for the membrane satellites (called MemSats) as detailed here.

Summer; 2026

Our solar sail team officially took off during the summer of 2026 as we began working through our preliminary design review of our prototype solar sail. During STEP 1, teams developed and presented a white paper detailing technical information to judges. Our white paper can be found here.
I led the power and sensors sub team where I...

researched lightweight solar power systems including GaAs photovoltaic solar cells
researched power storage methods through ultrathin LiPo pouch cells
calculated and evaluated the spacecraft’s power budget, emphasizing power-to-mass ratio
developed operating modes depending on situational and timing conditions during orbit
developed the electrical wiring architecture for our power subsystem using KiCAD
assessed onboard sensors for monitoring temperature and motion

Fall Semester; 2026

Near the beginning of the school year, our STEP 1 submission was approved and we were selected to move onto STEP 2. Once the team arrived back on campus in the fall, we began focusing on the physical architecture of our sail. With the electrical architechture secured, I shifted my focus to the frame and nodal analysis of our sail.

As apart of the frame modal and node analysis subteam so far, I have...

analyzed the solar sail frame through FEA software to detect the natural frequency and deflection of the sail
compared FEA findings to a physical solar sail frame model, where we physically tested the frame to observe natural frequency deflections
researched different node archetypes for implementation in the node frame
developed a flange-based node to emphasize thread-skipping during transit using SOLIDWORKS and Onshape