Locally optimal control laws for Earth-bound solar sailing with atmospheric drag

Carzana, Livio; Visser, Pieter; Heiligers, Jeannette

doi:10.1016/j.ast.2022.107666

Cited by 13 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…In this analysis, we include perturbations due to aerodynamic forces, Earth's oblateness, and solar radiation pressure while, since only LEOs are considered, third-body effects and other sources of perturbation are neglected, in agreement with Refs. [46,47,[57][58][59]. The perturbative acceleration a can then be decomposed into four contributions…”

Section: Mathematical Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…[60] and applied to similar scenarios in Refs. [59,61,62], can be enforced. The assumption of hyperthermal flow implies that the spacecraft velocity relative to the atmospheric particles coincides with the orbital velocity.…”

Section: Aerodynamic Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…where σ N and σ T denote the normal and tangential momentum accommodation coefficients, respectively, and V R is the ratio of the average thermal velocity of atmospheric particles to the spacecraft orbital velocity. Typical values taken from the literature are used in the simulations, that is, σ N = σ T = 0.8 and V R = 0.05 [59,62]. Finally, in Equations ( 7) and ( 8), m is the total spacecraft mass and A is the total drag sail area.…”

Section: Aerodynamic Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, since the calculation of ρ through the NRLMSISE-00 model is computationally demanding, the number of required evaluations of the atmospheric density is reduced by applying an iterative procedure, analogous to what is done in Ref. [59]. More precisely, at a generic time instant t at which MEOEs are known, it is possible to calculate the osculating orbit period T = 2 π a 3 /µ ⊕ , where the tilde symbol denotes quantities calculated at t = t. The orbital period T is divided into N equally spaced instants belonging to the set S defined as…”

Section: Spinning Drag Sail Dynamicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Performance Estimate of a Spin-Stabilized Drag Sail for Spacecraft Deorbiting

Niccolai,

Mengali

2024

Applied Sciences

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The growing amount of space debris in geocentricorbit poses a significant threat to the future of space operations. To mitigate this problem, current international guidelines state that a satellite should be able to deorbit or insert into a graveyard orbit within 25 years from the end of its operational life. In this context, drag-enhancing devices such as drag sails are currently an active field of research and development because of their ability to make a spacecraft decay from low Earth orbit without the need for any on-board propellant. Drag sails, conceptually similar to solar sails, are thin membranes deployed by a spacecraft at the end of its operational life to increase the area-to-mass ratio and, consequently, atmospheric drag. To be effectively exploited, a drag sail should maximize the surface area exposed to atmospheric particle flow. However, this would require a fully functional three-axis stabilization system, which may either be unavailable or non-functional on an orbiting satellite after years of space operations. To simplify the deorbiting phase, in this paper we propose to use a spin-deployed and spin-stabilized drag sail, which represents a reasonable compromise between simplicity of implementation and deorbiting performance in terms of total decay time. In fact, a spinning drag sail could take advantage of centrifugal force to unfold and of gyroscopic stiffness to maintain an inertially fixed axis of rotation. Numerical simulations accounting for the main perturbation effects quantify the effectiveness of the proposed device compared with an optimal configuration (i.e., a three-axis stabilized drag sail) and a tumbling drag sail.

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Section: Mathematical Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Aerodynamic Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Aerodynamic Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Spinning Drag Sail Dynamicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Performance Estimate of a Spin-Stabilized Drag Sail for Spacecraft Deorbiting

Niccolai,

Mengali

2024

Applied Sciences

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“…Solar sail is a propellantless propulsion spacecraft that gain a continuous thrust from the solar radiation pressure (SRP) force by reflecting the sunlight via a light sail, which has gradually received increasing attention in recent years (Spencer et al, 2021;Quarta et al, 2022;Carzana et al, 2022;Pengyuan et al, 2022). The Attitude control system is particularly important for a solar sail, as its orbital acceleration is mainly controlled by the attitude of the sail.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adaptive Finite-time Attitude Tracking Control for Solar Sail with State-dependent Torque Saturation

Wu,

Wang,

Zhu

2024

CEAI

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This paper aims to investigate a fast attitude tracking control strategy for a solar sail equipped with sliding masses (SM) and roll stabilized bar (RSB) in presence of uncertain inertia, unknown disturbance, actuator saturation, and coupling between control torque and attitude angles. The state-dependent saturation of the attitude control torque is proposed to deal with the coupling between control torque and attitude angles. A novel adaptive finitetime control law is proposed to obtain fast attitude tracking, where two novel adaptive control parameters are designed to compensate the uncertain inertia, the unknown disturbance, and the state-dependent torque saturation. Compared to traditional attitude controller for solar sail, the proposed control strategy has the advantages of guaranteeing the success of actuator allocations by considering the torque constraints and of making full use of the saturated torque for fast attitude tracking. The effectiveness of the proposed control strategy is shown in a Sunline tracking mission via simulation.

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Preliminary Trajectory Design for Mitigating Debris Utilizing Solar Sailing and Conventional Propulsion

Kim

2024

Int. J. Aeronaut. Space Sci.

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In this study, preliminary trajectory design for debris removal in low Earth orbit using solar sails is explored. Emphasis is placed on regions below 1000 km altitude, where the debris population is rapidly growing. The aim is to propose a mission concept capable of repetitively executing removal processes. The trajectory is intricately crafted, segmented into rendezvous, proximity operations, and deorbiting phases. Safety is prioritized by leveraging walking safety ellipses during proximity operations, ensuring efficient capture of targeted debris. Additionally, the feasibility and limitations of the mission concept are assessed through numerical simulations based on characteristic acceleration, a pivotal performance index of solar sails.

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Locally optimal control laws for Earth-bound solar sailing with atmospheric drag

Cited by 13 publications

References 33 publications

Performance Estimate of a Spin-Stabilized Drag Sail for Spacecraft Deorbiting

Performance Estimate of a Spin-Stabilized Drag Sail for Spacecraft Deorbiting

Adaptive Finite-time Attitude Tracking Control for Solar Sail with State-dependent Torque Saturation

Preliminary Trajectory Design for Mitigating Debris Utilizing Solar Sailing and Conventional Propulsion

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