PanelSat® History

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Home History SoSo-steering MSU DTU Operation Contact


1999
About 1999 all started with a little plywood dinghy, Frank Ellinghaus built (and sailed) in USA. While looking for boat and rigging designs he stumbled onto a Newsgroup where he found out, that sailing was not only possible on earth but also in space by using the solar radiation pressure to propel a spacecraft. A solar sail spacecraft would need no fuel at all for operation. This thought fascinated him and he looked for solar sail designs and came onto some patent applications for solar sails.

What he saw, where something like kite designs or square sailcraft with poles>/masts with little potential to manipulate those spacecraft. A solar sail spacecraft with additional thruster propulsion should it be. So he came up with his solar-thruster-sailor-design of a large solar sail spacecraft with a stiff Outer Ring which allowed to fix double thruster units (DTU) to it's rim to provide a good lever for turning the (large in the spuare km range) solar sailcraft.

That solar sail would also feature "Roller Reefing" whereby the sail was fixed onto rolls which could furl those foils in or outwards.
This would allow to assemble large structures in space and also finetuning the directions and power onto those sail foils through the solar radiation pressure. He also aquired some German patents on this designs. But for space structures that large, having them mounted in space, would be pretty expensive and the chances, that they would get built are unlikely, even in our times.

Those early German only patents on large solar sailcraft structures are long ago expired. But what stays are some properties for the actual PanelSat® design like a stiff Outer Ring structure which carries actuators like Double Thruster Units (DTU) or Mass Switching Units (MSU).

2007
Frank attended the 1st Symposium on Solar Sailing (ISSS2007) in Herrsching, Germany http://www.isss.spacesailing.net/


2010
At the 2nd Internatinal Symposium on Solar Sailing in New York, Frank presented his paper "Solar Sailing and Solar Power-Generation By Roller-Reefing"

Mar.29,2011
The US patent US000007913953B2
SOLAR SAIL LAUNCH SYSTEM AND SOLAR SAIL ATTITUDE CONTROL SYSTEM was granted.
Oct.6,2015
The US-patent US 9150312B2 US 9150312B2
MOBILE SOLAR POWER STATION AND COUPLED SOLAR POWER STATIONS FOR SPACE BASED POWER GENERATION AND TRANSMISSION
was granted.
2019
In 2019 Frank attended the international Symposium on Solar Sailing (ISSS2019) and presented his aluminum built PanelSat-Model, as well as a paper and a poster.

Two photos of the aluminum model shown on the Symposium in Aachen/Germany. It has a diameter of 180 cm.
PanelSat
larger photo

This photo shows the frontside of the model. A real PanelSat® would carry solar cell arrays or solar cell foils for power collection.

First Model made from aluminum,
larger photo

The sideview shows the model with an solar sail addon case underneath. The solar sail would allow orbit escape.

The UK-patent GB 2564734
"Panelsat, an agile satellite with fuel free attitude control"
was granted on October 7, 2019.



The US-patent US9,150,312 B2
"PANELSAT--STACK ABLE SATELLITE WITH FUEL FREE ATTITUDE CONTROL"
was granted on May 4, 2021.


2024
Frank and his friend and neighbour in Germany, Mr. Tan Ke, decided to take PanelSat® to a new level, by developing a 3-D-printed base model together.
Frank is responsible for the overall design and mechanical works, while Ke works with Frank together on the design and - as a programmer - takes over the programming of the actuator steering infrastructure.

PanelSat402small larger photo

The photo shows a first small, 50 cm diameter PanelSat® printout model, developed by Frank and Ke. Later models will have at least 1 m diameter and would be scaleable, up to the diameter of the launcher spacecraft.



2025
Frank has founded PanelSat GmbH, beginning business activity 01.01.2025.


Does this project look promising to you?
We are interested in further cooperation, especially in relation to launch service providers, satellite fleet operators, 3-D fabrication, photovoltaic-fabrication (especially space rated photovoltaic cells and photovoltaic foils), electrical design and fabrication. If you provide such services or think, you can and want to contribute to the development of PanelSat®, no matter if you are a company or a person, get in touch to us.

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