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Solar Pressure May Help Kepler Return To Planet-Hunting Duties
Zothecula writes "Last August, it looked as if NASA's Kepler space telescope was as good as scrap due to the failure of its attitude control system. Now the space agency proposes what it calls the K2 mission concept, which may fix the problem by using the Sun to regain attitude control and allow Kepler to resume its search for extrasolar planets."
Attitude control
Attitude describes position in a rotational sense. TFS is correct.
Common Sense (+1)
This is fascinating, but what I find even more interesting is why they couldn't use a similar technique to make the need for the attitude control wheels obsolete?
Wouldn't work very well near Earth, because you're in darkness much of the time and there's enough atmosphere left that drag might be larger than any force you could create from light pressure.
But I seem to remember that Mariner Mercury used light pressure on its solar sails for attitude control when it could, to miminize fuel use by the thrusters.
Mod parent up. In Earth orbit, aerodynamic wind is very tiny but so is solar wind, and solar steering as a primary attitude-control system would be very complex. Acceptable as a last-ditch fallback, but you wouldn't want to base a mission on it.