Research Network
The planetary sunshade concept is the subject of multiple research efforts worldwide.
If you are engaged in sunshade research, please let us know! Our Research Directory highlights credible contributions to the advancement of the planetary sunshade concept. To be included, work must demonstrate one of the following: peer-reviewed publication, funded research program, demonstrated hardware development, or a technical report from a recognized institution.
| Effort/Institution | Point of Contact | Work Area | Country | Website |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gama Space | Andrew Nutter | Solar sail manufacturing and control | France | https://www.gamaspace.com/ |
| U. of Nottingham | Chantal Cappelletti | Engineering research & smallsat mission design | United Kingdom | https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/aerospace/research/space/index.aspx |
| Stockholm Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) | Christer Fuglesang | overall architecture for optimization of the system and planning for a precursor mission | Sweden | https://www.kth.se/en/sci/centra/rymdcenter |
| Fuglesang Space Center | Christer Perrson | Climate insurance financing | Sweden | https://rymdcenter.se/ |
| U. of Glasgow | Colin McInnes | Investigating demo mission, and related work | Scotland | https://www.aria.org.uk/opportunity-spaces/future-proofing-our-climate-and-weather/exploring-climate-cooling/ |
| Students for the Exploration and Development of Space | Damian Clogher | Competition for sunshade business plans - 6 student teams | USA | https://seds.org/all-projects/ |
| U. of Chicago | Dan Fabrycky (UChicago), \nEdwin Kite, Ben Bromley (Utah) | Dust into stable earth orbit, "Artificial Planetary Torus" | USA | https://climateengineering.uchicago.edu/entities/orbital-dust-injection-an-artificial-planetary-torus/ |
| Prof. Emeritus/physics Dept., NYC Collegw of Technology, CUNY | Gregory L. Matloff | My research concentration for decades as been interstellar solar sailing. I have a recent JBIS paper on Sunshades | USA | |
| TU Delft | Jeannette Heiligers | Engineering research into sunshades | Netherlands | |
| U. of Luxembourg and Technical University of Berlin | Jonas Bahlmann | My research focuses on space sustainability in the context of large space structures, such as the sunshade. | Luxembourg and Germany | |
| Interstellar Research Group (formerly of NASA MSFC) | Les Johnson | Solar sail technologist; technology maturation & planning | USA | https://lesjohnsonauthor.com/ |
| U. of Glasgow | Matteo Ceriotti | Orbital and attitude dynamics, with applications to solar sailing. I investigate how solar radiation pressure can be exploited, both in terms of attitude control and orbital transfers, to enable new mission concepts. | Scotland | https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/engineering/staff/matteoceriotti/ |
| Earth cup | Michael McDonald | Solar Sailing Race to SEL1 | USA | https://www.earthcup.space/ |
| Ethos Space | Ross Centers, Jeff Overbeek | Space resources and industrialization. Works on tech that includes 1st steps for lunar-sourced sunshade. | USA | https://ethos-space.com/ |
| NASA JPL | Saptarshi Bandyopadhyay | DimSun concept - dust cloud at L1 | USA | 10.1109/AERO63441.2025.11068752 |
| AstroCool | Sergey Ivliev | Proposal for deploying micron-scale moon dust at the Earth–Sun L1 point | Austria | astrocool.com |
| Institute of Space Systems, University of Stuttgart | Tharshan Maheswaran | System analysis of an International Planetary Sunshade (IPSS) | Germany | https://www.irs.uni-stuttgart.de/en/research/space-transport-technology/Mission_System_Analysis/ |
| DLR - Bremen | Thimo Grundman | Gossamer Roadmap for solar sail and sunshade development | Germany | |
| MIT - City Labs | Umberto Fugiglando | Tested bubbles in outer space conditions that could form an efficient thin-film structures for deflecting solar radiation | USA | https://senseable.mit.edu/space-bubbles/ |