Trajectory and Spacecraft Design for a Pole-Sitter Mission

Optimal Trajectories for Planetary Pole-Sitter Missions

“…For this, a spacecraft mass budget analysis is performed, similar to the one presented in Reference [3] and details are therefore omitted here. For an SEP spacecraft, a range of spacecraft subsystems are taken into account, including the thruster mass, the propellant tank mass, the mass of the solar arrays required to provide adequate levels of power to the SEP thrusters as well as the propellant mass and the payload mass.…”

“…Reference [3]), it would be useful to compare the configurations' performance based on the payload mass that can be carried onboard the pole-sitter spacecraft for a given lifetime of the mission. For this, a spacecraft mass budget analysis is performed, similar to the one presented in Reference [3] and details are therefore omitted here.…”

Novel solar sail mission concepts for high-latitude Earth and lunar observation

“…Higher temporal resolution can be achieved from Molniya orbits, but satisfactory coverage of the polar caps or high-latitude regions cannot always be achieved. In addition to these traditional concepts, the literature shows a range of other concepts for high-latitude observation, including Taranis orbits [18], pole-sitter orbits [19], solar sail displaced equilibria [20] and eight-shaped orbits [21] in the Sun-Earth system, all providing a different trade-off between resolution of the observations (i.e.…”

Loosely Formation‐Displaced Geostationary Orbit Optimization with Complex Hybrid Sail Propulsion

“…Recently, several solar sail demonstrator missions have been achieved with Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the Interplanetary Kite-Craft Accelerated by Radiation of the Sun (IKAROS), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), NanoSail-D2, and the Planetary Society, LightSail 1 [7][8][9]. For NKOs, there have been some solid conclusions that adding the propulsion-saving propellant such as solar sails is helpful to reduce the propellant consumption, which ensures a longer mission lifetime [5].…”

“…However, continuous propulsion is necessary for NKO maintenance, and it can be provided either by a solar electric propulsion (SEP) thruster [4] or by a hybrid of SEP and solar sailing [5]. Solar sailing demands many high-technology requirements on materials, control, and structures [6].…”