Design and applications of solar sail periodic orbits in the non-autonomous Earth-Moon system

• Main Authors: Heiligers, Maria, Macdonald, Malcolm, Parker, Jeffrey S.
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: 2015
• Subjects: Mechanical engineering and machinery; Motor vehicles. Aeronautics. Astronautics; Bifur; Lagrange; South Pole; South pole
• Online Access: https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/53932/; https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/53932/1/Heiligers_etal_AAS15_Design_and_applications_solar_sail_periodic_orbits_non_autonomous_Earth_Moon_system.pdf

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.