Solar-Sail Trajectory Design to Planetary Pole Sitters

Vergaaij, Merel; Heiligers, Jeannette

doi:10.2514/1.g003952

Cited by 8 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…From test runs it appeared that two different sail attitudes in the departure trajectory and one sail attitude in the arrival trajectory provided suitable results in terms of objective function value, see also the columns for α d and α a in Table 3. The obtained objective function values, ranging from approximately 5×10 −5 to 10 −4 in dimensionless value, are similar to those obtained for other photon-sail enabled heteroclinic-like connections in three-body problems that also employed a methodology based on genetic algorithms [28,29]. When summing the duration that each sail attitude is maintained, i.e., summing the elements of the θ α,max vector in Table 3, the total duration of the transfers considered ranges from 0.79π to 1.92π, i.e., up to a maximum of one α-Cen "year", which is equal to almost 80 Earth years, see Table 2.…”

Section: Motion Between Equilibriasupporting

confidence: 74%

Photon-Sail Equilibria in the Alpha Centauri System

Heiligers

Schoutetens

Dachwald

2021

Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics

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Section: Motion Between Equilibriasupporting

confidence: 74%

Photon-Sail Equilibria in the Alpha Centauri System

Heiligers

Schoutetens

Dachwald

2021

Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics

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“…To optimize the solar sail mission scenario, MATLAB ® 's built-in genetic algorithm is employed again, optimizing the same parameters as for the chemical mission scenario (Cage et al, 1994;Vasile et al, 2010;Vergaaij and Heiligers, 2019). However, the resource mass is not implemented as an absolute mass in kg, but as a (non-integer) multiple of the total sail mass (λ r ), allowing for faster constraint evaluation.…”

Section: Solar-sail Mission Scenariomentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The method to determine whether a transfer is feasible, is based on the technique used by Vergaaij and Heiligers (2019). Using this method, an initial state is propagated forwards, and a final state is propagated backwards.…”

Section: Strategy To Find Feasible Transfersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Economic assessment of high-thrust and solar-sail propulsion for near-earth asteroid mining

Vergaaij

McInnes

Ceriotti

2021

Advances in Space Research

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Asteroid mining has the potential to greatly reduce the cost of in-space manufacturing, production of propellant for space transportation and consumables for crewed spacecraft, compared to launching the required resources from the Earth's deep gravity well. This paper discusses the top-level mission architecture and trajectory design for these resource-return missions, comparing high-thrust trajectories with continuous low-thrust solar-sail trajectories. The paper focuses on maximizing the economic Net Present Value, which takes the time-cost of finance into account and therefore balances the returned resource mass and mission duration. The different propulsion methods are compared in terms of maximum economic return and sets of attainable target asteroids. Results for

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“…Missions have been proposed, for instance, based on a variety of non-Keplerian orbits, including pole-sitters and artificial Lagrange points [1,2]. Pole-sitters may be of considerable commercial and scientific interest for telecommunications and Earth remote-sensing, while artificial Lagrange points closer to the Sun than L1 could improve warning times for threatening space weather events [2,3].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

LightSail 2 Solar Sail Control and Orbit Evolution

et al. 2023

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The propellantless thrust of solar sails makes them capable of entirely new classes of missions compared to conventional or electric engines. Initiated in 2010, the Planetary Society’s LightSail program sought to advance solar sail technology with the flights of LightSail 1 and 2. From launch in 2019 to deorbit in late 2022, LightSail 2 demonstrated the first controlled solar sailing in Earth’s orbit using a CubeSat. By adjusting the orientation of the sail relative to the sun twice per orbit, LightSail 2 controlled solar radiation pressure on the sail to offset losses in orbital energy from atmospheric drag. Previous papers analyzed early mission results to show the effect this had on reducing the spacecraft’s orbital decay rate. Subsequent refinements to the spacecraft’s attitude control made throughout the mission eventually enabled it to achieve sustained net increases in orbital energy. This paper presents an analysis of the orbit changes and attitude control performance over the entire mission. Methods of assessing and improving the sail control are described. Activities and attitude behavior during the final deorbit phase are also analyzed, with results relevant to future drag sails as well as solar sail missions.

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Solar-Sail Trajectory Design to Planetary Pole Sitters

Cited by 8 publications

References 31 publications

Photon-Sail Equilibria in the Alpha Centauri System

Photon-Sail Equilibria in the Alpha Centauri System

Economic assessment of high-thrust and solar-sail propulsion for near-earth asteroid mining

LightSail 2 Solar Sail Control and Orbit Evolution

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