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Propellant-efficient station-keeping using a hybrid sail in the Earth–Moon system

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Abstract

The problem of propellant-efficient station-keeping using a hybrid sail in the Earth–Moon system is investigated in this paper. To achieve high-precision station-keeping and minimize propellant consumption, the problem is addressed from perspectives of reference orbits design and control strategy design. A high-fidelity model of a hybrid sail, which consists of a solar electric propulsion (SEP) system and a solar sail covered by reflectivity control devices (RCDs), is exploited for reference orbits design in the Earth–Moon system using numerical methods. These hybrid-sail perturbed halo and Lyapunov orbits are parameterized by the sail’s reflectivity and are inherent unstable. An orbit-attitude control strategy is proposed for station-keeping which is composed of three parts: a nonlinear disturbance observer (NDO)-based optimal periodic orbital controller, SEP acceleration optimization, and a NDO-based robust backstepping attitude controller. In particular, RCDs are used in both orbital control and attitude control. Numerical results show that the proposed control strategy can guarantee high-precision station-keeping and effective reduction in propellant consumption.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the Major Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Numbers 61690210 and 61690211, and National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Number 11572248.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Astronautics, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, China

    Chen Gao, Jianping Yuan & Junhua Zhang

  2. China Spacesat CO., LTD, China Academy of Space Technology, Beijing, China

    Linli Guo

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  1. Chen Gao
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Correspondence to Jianping Yuan.

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Gao, C., Yuan, J., Zhang, J. et al. Propellant-efficient station-keeping using a hybrid sail in the Earth–Moon system. Nonlinear Dyn 95, 1323–1346 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11071-018-4631-1

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