Solar Sail Halo Orbit Control using Reflectivity Control Devices

Abstract

A new solar sail orbit control strategy is proposed for the solar sail halo orbit mission. The reflectivity control device, initially developed for attitude control, is utilized to control the solar sail orbit by switching the states between absorption and specular reflection. The solar radiation pressure force of a solar sail equipped with reflectivity control devices is modeled, and can be changed continuously by adjusting a continuous variable associated with the reflectivity control device. This model is used to study the artificial Lagrange point and periodic orbit around it in the restricted three-body problem. The dynamical equations of motion are linearized around the periodic orbit, and linear quadratic regulator and Floquet theory are utilized to design the control law for the linear time-periodic system. Utilization of attitude adjustment is a way to control the orbit of the solar sail without reflectivity control devices. In this paper, the reflectivity control device is used to stabilize the periodic orbit without attitude adjustment. The results based on attitude adjustment and reflectivity control devices are compared. The simulations indicate that the strategy using reflectivity control devices is more robust with respect to initial errors.

Equilibria near asteroids for solar sails with reflection control devices

“…The numerical results indicate that the periodic orbits are unstable for both cases. Active control of artificial equilibria has been studied in the SunEarth system (Gong and Li 2014b). The equilibrium can be stabilized using either two attitude angles or the reflectivity rate as the control input.…”

“…The RCD was mounted on the edge of the sail membrane to generate a torque by changing the induced force on each small element's surface by switching between on and off states (Mimasu et al 2011). The idea of using the RCD for orbit control and attitude-orbit control was discussed in the GeoSail Mission (Mu et al 2013(Mu et al , 2014 and the Artificial Lagrange Point Mission (Aliasi et al 2013;Gong and Li 2014b).…”

Initial Three-Dimensional Trajectory Design for Solar Sails Using Bezier Shaping Approach

“…In this paper, η is the ratio of reflected sunlight to total incident sunlight, and considered adjustable by controlling the input voltage of the electrochromic material of the RCD [42]. As discussed in [46], [47], the propulsive acceleration of the solar radiation pressure (SRP) on an RCD-equipped solar sail in o o − x o y o z o can be written as follows:…”

“…Mu et al [43], [44] proposed the use of RCDs for orbit control and attitude-orbit control in the GeoSail Mission. Gong and Li applied solar sails with RCDs in Non-Keplerian orbits, such as the L2 Earth-Moon libration point [45], Halo orbit [46], and equilibria near asteroids [47]. The objective of this study was therefore to apply the previously proposed Bezier curve-based shaping approach in [25] to provide an efficient initial design for the three-dimensional interplanetary trajectory of a spacecraft propelled by an RCD-equipped solar sail.…”

Dynamics and control of flexible spinning solar sails under reflectivity modulation

“…In most previous studies (Aliasi and Mengali, 2013;Borggräfe et al, 2014;Gong and Li, 2014a;Mu and Gong, 2014b), to simplify the analysis, the sail membrane is considered as a rigid structure. An ideal solar sail is a rigid flat surface for which every piece of membrane is set at the same angle to incoming sunlight direction.…”