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A new solar sail orbit

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Abstract

Solar sail is used to achieve a geocentric sun-synchronous frozen orbit. This kind of orbit combines the characteristics of both sun-synchronous orbits and frozen orbits. Furthermore, the impossible orbits for a typical spacecraft such as sun-synchronous orbits whose inclination is less than 90° are also possible for solar sail. To achieve a sun-synchronous frozen orbit, the characteristic acceleration of the sail is chosen properly. In addition, the attitude of the sail is adjusted to keep the sun-synchronous and frozen characteristics. The perturbations including atmosphere drag, third-body gravitational forces and shaded regions are discussed, where the atmosphere drag is cancelled by solar radiation pressure force, third-body gravitational forces have negligible effects on the orbit and the shaded region can be avoided by choosing the classical orbit elements of the sail. At last, a numerical example is employed to validate the sun-synchronous frozen characteristics of the sail.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Aerospace, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    ShengPing Gong, JunFeng Li & HeXi Baoyin

  2. State Key Laboratory of Astronautical Dynamics, Xi’an Satellite Control Center, Xi’an, 710043, China

    ShengPing Gong

  3. Advanced Space Concepts Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, G1 1XJ, UK

    Jules Simo

Authors
  1. ShengPing Gong
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  2. JunFeng Li
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  3. HeXi Baoyin
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  4. Jules Simo
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Correspondence to ShengPing Gong.

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Gong, S., Li, J., Baoyin, H. et al. A new solar sail orbit. Sci. China Technol. Sci. 55, 848–855 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-011-4691-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-011-4691-7

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