Optimal Solar Sail Orbit Transfers to Synchronous Orbits
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Optimal Solar Sail Orbit Transfers to Synchronous
Orblts'
R. B. Powers" and V.L. Coverstone" Abstract The recent development of a strong, lightweight, thin-member substrate may provide the technological breakthrough that will enable heliocentric solar sailing missions. The missions considered in this paper used solar sails to transfer to a heliocentric circular orbit and then to apply a constant outward radial thrust acceleration. This radial acceleration allows the spacecraft to have a larger period than the Keplerian period at that radius. Heliocentric circular orbits are designed to match the orbital period of Earth or Mars and these designed orbits are termed synchronous orbits. Optimal control theory is applied to determine minimum-time solar sail orbit transfers for a range of Earth and Mars synchronous orbits and several numerical results are presented.
Introduction The concept of using a solar sail as a means of space propulsion was first introduced in 1924 by two Russian space pioneers, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Fridrickh Tsander. In their theory, the transfer of momentum that occurs when a photon is reflected from the surface of a solar sail provides a mechanism for propulsion. This propulsive effect on the orbital motion of interplanetary spacecraft was first taken into account in 1974 with the Mariner 10 missions to Mercury and Venus. Solar panels on the Mariner 10 spacecraft when tilted at various angles to the Sun experienced differences in sunlight pressure, thus inducing rotational motion of the spacecraft [1]. In the late 1970's, the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) initiated a study to determine the feasibility of using a solar sail vehicle to rendezvous with Halley's Comet during its 1986 approach to the inner solar system. Due to the large energy requirements of the mission, both solar sails and solar electric propulsion were studied as feasible spacecraft propulsion techniques. Solar electric propulsion was 'Presented at the AAS/AIAA Astrodynamics Conference, Girdwood, Alaska, August 1999, Paper Number AAS 99-334. 2Engineering Staff, Guidance and Control Systems, United Space Alliance, Houston, TX, [email protected] 3Associate Professor, Department of Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Member AAS, Senior Member AIAA, [email protected]
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ultimately chosen for the mission since solar sails were deemed to not be a sufficiently mature technology for a near-term space mission. In the end, the U.S. Halley mission was cancelled and research efforts directed at producing an operational solar sail vehicle for NASA were halted in 1981 [1]. Solar sail spacecraft fit into NASA's "better, faster, cheaper" paradigm and now look even more promising than they did in the 1970's. Recently, a new strong, lightweight structure has been developed and this thin-member substrate has been coined a technological breakthrough for use as solar sails [2]. In addition, microsatellite technology allows the solar sail payload to h
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