Design and Applications of Solar Sail Periodic Orbits in the Non-Autonomous Earth-Moon System

Conference paper (2015)

Authors

M.J. Heiligers University of Strathclyde, Astrodynamics & Space Missions - Aerospace Engineering
M. MacDonald University of Strathclyde
Jeffrey S. Parker University of Colorado
Research Group
Astrodynamics & Space Missions (Aerospace Engineering) (TU Delft)
Copyright: © 2015 M.J. Heiligers, Malcolm Macdonald, Jeffrey S. Parker
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Published Date

2015

Language

English

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Faculty

Aerospace Engineering

Department

Space Engineering

Research Group

Astrodynamics & Space Missions

Abstract

Solar sailing has great potential for a range of high-energy and long duration mis-sions in the Sun-Earth system. This paper extends this potential to the non-autonomous Earth-Moon system through the use of a differential correction scheme, and by selecting suitable in-plane and out-of-plane sail steering laws to develop new families of solar sail libration point orbits that are periodic with the Sun’s motion around the Earth-Moon system. New orbits include those that bifur-cate from the natural Lyapunov, halo and eight-shaped orbit families at the first and second Lagrange points. The potential of these orbits is demonstrated by con-sidering the performance of a subset of orbits for high-latitude Earth observations, lunar far-side communications, and lunar South Pole coverage.