Potential Solar Sail Degradation Effects on Trajectory and Attitude Control

Abstract

b O 3 = {er, et, e h } is an orthogonal right-handed polar coordinate frame. er points always along the sun-spacecraft line, e h is the orbit plane normal (pointing along the spacecraft's orbital angular momentum vector), and et completes the right-handed coordinate system (er × et = e h). c See e.g. Ref. 3 pp. 38-39. d Note that one cos α results from the projection of the sail area onto er, whereas the other cos α results from the projection of the two SRP force components onto n.

Heliocentric trajectory analysis of Sun-pointing smart dust with electrochromic control

“…However, it is useful to obtain approximate information about the degradation effect on the spacecraft trajectory by means of simplified mathematical models. In this context, (Dachwald et al, 2005(Dachwald et al, , 2006(Dachwald et al, , 2007 have developed semi-analytical parametric models for analyzing the behavior of photonic solar sails. The main assumption is that the generic optical coefficient of the reflective film (such as the coefficient g) has an exponential-type variation with time, and is characterized by means of suitable free parameters to be tuned as a function of the physical properties of the material in accordance with the measurements obtained by laboratory tests.…”

Electric Sail Mission Analysis for Outer Solar System Exploration

“…This peculiarity allows a solar sail to continuously provide a propelling acceleration for the whole long mission time, on the order of some dozen years. In fact, the time interval in which the sail may produce thrust is indeed theoretically infinite, if one neglects the degradation effects of the reflective film [8][9][10][11] due to the interactions with the solar light [12]. The second reason is that the solar sail can gain a large amount of ∆V in a reasonable amount of time by making a close approach to the Sun [5,13,14].…”

Road Map to L4/L5 with a solar sail

“…The solar sail acceleration is produced by the impact of the photons emitted by the Sun on the surface of the sail, which will be reflected and absorbed by the sail material. 5,14 For a solar sail with an area A, the force due to reflected photons is given by F r = 2P A r s , n 2 n while the force due to absorption is F a = P A r s , n r s , where r s is the Sun-sail direction, n is the normal direction to sail surface (both unit vectors), and P = P 0 (R 0 /R) 2 is the SRP at a distance R from the Sun (with P 0 = 4.563 N/m 2 the SRP at R 0 = 1 AU). If we denote ρ a as the absorption coefficient and ρ s as the reflectivity coefficient (which satisfy ρ a + ρ s = 1), the sail acceleration is given by:…”