Solar sail propulsion systems enable a wide range of missions that require constant thrust or high delta-V over long mission times. One particularly challenging mission type is a comet rendezvous mission. This paper presents optimal low-thrust trajectory designs for a range of sailcraft performance metrics and mission transit times that enables a comet rendezvous mission. These optimal trajectory results provide a trade space which can be parameterized in terms of mission duration and sailcraft performance parameters such that a design space for a small satellite comet chaser mission is identified. These results show that a feasible space exists for a small satellite to perform a comet chaser mission in a reasonable mission time.


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    Title :

    Chasing a Comet with a Solar Sail


    Contributors:

    Conference:

    AAS/AIAA Space Flight Mechanics Conference ; 2008 ; Galveston, TX, United States


    Publication date :

    2008-01-27


    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English


    Keywords :


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