AbstractTo study the spatial and temporal variations of plasma in the highly dynamic environment of the magnetosphere, multiple spacecraft must fly in a formation. The objective for this study is to investigate the feasibility of solar sail formation flying in the Earth-centered, Sun-synchronous orbit regime. The focus of this effort is to enable formation flying for a group of solar sails that maintain a nominally fixed Sun-pointing attitude during formation flight, solely for the purpose of precessing their orbit apse lines Sun-synchronously. A fixed-attitude solar sail formation is motivated by the difficulties in the simultaneous control of orbit and attitude in flying solar sails. First, the secular rates of the orbital elements resulting from the effects of solar radiation pressure (SRP) are determined using averaging theory for a Sun-pointing attitude sail. These averaged rates are used to analytically derive the first-order necessary conditions for a drift-free solar sail formation in Sun-synchronous orbits, assuming a fixed Sun-pointing orientation for each sail in formation. The validity of the first-order necessary conditions are illustrated by designing quasi-periodic relative motions. Next, nonlinear programming is applied to design truly drift-free two-craft solar sail formations. Lastly, analytic expressions are derived to determine the long-term dynamics and sensitivity of the formation with respect to constant attitude errors, uncertainty in orbital elements, and uncertainty in a sail's characteristic acceleration.

    HighlightsSolar sail formation flying in geocentric, Sun-synchronous elliptical orbits is studied.First-order necessary conditions are derived for SRP invariant relative motion.Both analytical and numerical formation design methods are presented.Formation sensitivity analysis with respect to uncertainties is explored.


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    Titel :

    Drift-free solar sail formations in elliptical Sun-synchronous orbits


    Beteiligte:

    Erschienen in:

    Acta Astronautica ; 139 ; 201-212


    Erscheinungsdatum :

    2017-06-27


    Format / Umfang :

    12 pages




    Medientyp :

    Aufsatz (Zeitschrift)


    Format :

    Elektronische Ressource


    Sprache :

    Englisch







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