Astronomy Department
Columbia University, New York, NY

As a contribution to an unpublished white paper on a novel spinning solar sail concept, I devised a stress analysis and design optimization algorithm used to prove the mechanical feasibility of the design. This included researching the properties and failure modes of proposed materials, leveraging numerical optimization methods to define an optimal sail profile, and determining the maximum achievable velocity of the system under a set of dimensional constraints. Computational work was completed in Python.

Results forthcoming – check back soon!