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

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 st...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Heiligers, M.J. (author), Macdonald, Malcolm (author), Parker, Jeffrey S. (author)
Other Authors: Turner, J.D. (editor), Wawrzyniak, G.G. (editor), Cerven, W.T. (editor), Majji, M. (editor)
Format: Conference Object
Language:English
Published: 2015
Subjects:
Online Access:http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:2e52eb9a-cacd-4eb0-b5f2-c45c9546c744
Description
Summary: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. Astrodynamics & Space Missions