Electric Solar Wind Sail in tailwind

The Electric Solar Wind Sail (E-sail) is a novelpropulsion concept that enables faster space travel tomany solar system targets. E-sail uses charged solarwind particles as the source of its propulsion. This isachieved by deploying long, conducting and chargedtethers, which get pushed by the solar wind byCoulomb drag [1].E-sail technology is being developed to technicalreadiness level (TRL) 4-5 by the European Union’sSeventh Framework Programme for Research andTechnological Development, EU FP7, in a projectnamed ESAIL (http://www.electric-sailing.fi/fp7).Prototypes of the key parts are to be produced. Thedesign will be scalable so that a real solar winddemonstration mission could be scaled up from them.We review here the latest results of the constantlyevolving E-sail project.