Optimal solar sail transfers to circular Earth-synchronous displaced orbits
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https://doi.org/10.1007/s42064-019-0057-x
Optimal solar sail transfers to circular Earth-synchronous displaced orbits Alessandro A. Quarta (), Giovanni Mengali, and Marco Bassetto Department of Civil and Industrial Engineering, University of Pisa, Pisa I-56122, Italy
ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to evaluate the minimum flight time of a solar sail-based spacecraft
KEYWORDS solar sail
towards Earth-synchronous (heliocentric) circular displaced orbits.
synchronous displaced orbit
These are special
displaced non-Keplerian orbits characterized by a period of one year, which makes them
trajectory optimization
suitable for the observation of Earth’s polar regions. The solar sail is modeled as a flat and purely reflective film with medium–low performance, that is, with a characteristic acceleration less than one millimeter per second squared. Starting from a circular parking orbit of radius equal to one astronomical unit, the optimal steering law is sought by considering the characteristic acceleration that is required for the maintenance of the target Earth-synchronous displaced orbit. The indirect approach used for the calculation of the optimal transfer trajectory allows the minimum flight time to be correlated with several Earth-synchronous displaced orbits, each one being characterized by given values of Earth–
Research Article
spacecraft distance and displacement over the ecliptic. The proposed mathematical model is
Received: 16 February 2019
validated by comparison with results available in the literature, in which a piecewise-constant
Accepted: 4 May 2019
steering law is used to find the optimal flight time for a transfer towards a one-year Type I
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non-Keplerian orbit.
1
Introduction
Closed non-Keplerian orbits have attracted the scientific interest in recent years, due to their unique advantages in astronomical missions [1]. A very promising class is represented by displaced non-Keplerian orbits (DNKOs), which are so called because their orbital plane does not contain the primary body [2, 3]. These orbits require a continuous thrust to be maintained, in such a way that the centrifugal and gravitational forces acting on the spacecraft balance each other. A good approximation of a DNKO may be obtained through a sequence of Keplerian arcs patched by impulsive maneuvers, as has been proposed by McInnes [4] in the special case of DNKOs of circular shape, while a more general solution has been recently obtained by Caruso et al. [5] for approximating an elliptic DNKO with a sequence of azimuthally equally spaced impulses. The propellant necessary to generate the required
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2019
thrust limits the use of conventional propulsion systems (such as chemical or electric thruster) for those applications, and promotes the employment of propellantless propulsion systems, such as the photonic solar sail [6–9] or the more recent Electric Solar Wind Sail [10, 11]. In particular, DNKOs generated by solar sails have been proposed in mission applications both in heli
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