End-to-end trajectory design for a solar-sail-only pole-sitter at Venus, Earth, and Mars

Abstract

The concept of a pole-sitter has been under investigation for many years, showing the capability of a low-thrust propulsion system to maintain a spacecraft at a static position along a planet's polar axis.From such a position, the spacecraft has a view of the planet's polar regions equivalent to that of the low-and mid-latitudes from geostationary orbit. Previous work has hinted at the existence of polesitters that would only require a solar sail to provide the necessary propulsive thrust if a slight deviation from a position exactly along the polar axis is allowed, without compromising on the continuous view of the planet's polar region (a so-called quasi-pole-sitter). This paper conducts a further in-depth analysis of these high-potential solar-sail-only quasi-pole-sitters and presents a full end-to-end trajectory design: from launch and transfer to orbit design and orbit control. The results are the next steppingstone towards strengthening the feasibility and utility of these orbits for continuous planetary polar observation.

Earth-Venus Mission Analysis via Weak Capture and Nonlinear Orbit Control

“…This approach could even be extended to transfer an orbiter from Earth to Venus using a free-impulse flyby of an asteroid [15]. Heiligers et al studied the application of solar sails to maintain pole-sitters at Venus, enabling continuous planetary polar observation [16]. Girija et al expanded the use of aerocapture at Venus, demonstrating its effectiveness in deploying satellites in low-altitude circular orbits with different inclinations [17].…”

New Solar-Sail Orbits for Polar Observation of the Earth and Moon

“…The bulk of research related to the orbital dynamics and mission design of solar-sail propelled spacecraft focuses on the Sun-Earth system. One example is the pole-sitter concept that places a solar sail around the polar axis of the Earth so that one sailcraft is capable of providing continuous coverage of the polar regions [12,13]. The pole-sitter concept is designed in the Sun-Earth circular restricted three-body problem, augmented with the solar-sail acceleration.…”

“…The DC orbits therefore presents a new trade-off solution in terms of spatial resolution and number of spacecraft required, sitting "midway" of the pole-sitter and the constellations in [15]. Like all mission concepts presented in [12,13,[15][16][17], the DC orbits only allow the observation of one of the poles of the Earth and Moon at any time. To increase the mission scientific return, we investigate novel transfers between DC orbits above and below the Earth-Moon orbital plane.…”

Integrated guidance and control for solar sail station-keeping with optical degradation

“…These orbits can enable completely new mission applications such as polar observation Macdonald et al, 2006;Ceriotti and McInnes, 2012;Heiligers et al, 2019;Grebow et al, 2010), displaced geostationary orbits (Heiligers et al, 2012) and early solar storm warnings (McInnes, 1999;Yen, 2004;Heiligers et al, 2014). Each of these applications requires station-keeping to maintain the unstable reference orbits Lawrence and Piggott, 2004;Baoyin and McInnes, 2005;Waters and McInnes, 2008).…”