Abstract Building upon the recent development of solar sailing primer vector theory and its successful applications, we propose a new formulation for indirect solar-sail trajectory optimization, which minimizes solar angle (cone angle between the sail normal and sunlight vectors) over a trajectory. The minimum solar-angle objective is introduced to address a typical demand in mission design: having the ability to design trajectories with fixed time-of-flight, which is especially crucial when the mission involves time-sensitive events, such as scientific observations with specific lighting conditions, gravity assists at specific epochs, to name a few. We derive an analytical optimal control law for minimum solar-angle sail transfers by applying Pontryagin’s optimality principle. Our theoretical results illuminate that a quantity termed solar sailing primer vector characterizes the optimal solar-sail control law for both minimum-time and minimum solar-angle transfers, as is the case in Lawden’s primer vector theory for conventional low-thrust transfers. We numerically demonstrate these theoretical results by applying them to asteroid rendezvous transfers for NASA’s NEA Scout mission. The numerical examples also reveal the numerical advantage of using the minimum solar-angle objective over the minimum-time one for solar-sail trajectory design because of the smoother optimal control profile. Solar sailing primer vector theory provides a tool to characterize the optimal control law independent of particular state representations or solution methods, enabling mission designers to combine it with a wealth of techniques developed for low-thrust trajectory optimization.

    Highlights Propose an indirect trajectory optimization formulation based on solar sail primer vector theory. The formulation minimizes the solar angle over a transfer with fixed time-of-flight. The formulation derives an analytical optimal control law via Pontryagin’s minimum principle. Numerical examples demonstrate the analytical results in a NASA’s NEA Scout exploration scenario.


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    Titel :

    Indirect trajectory optimization via solar sailing primer vector theory: Minimum solar-angle transfers


    Beteiligte:

    Erschienen in:

    Acta Astronautica ; 211 ; 405-415


    Erscheinungsdatum :

    2023-06-19


    Format / Umfang :

    11 pages




    Medientyp :

    Aufsatz (Zeitschrift)


    Format :

    Elektronische Ressource


    Sprache :

    Englisch





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