Asteroid body-fixed hovering using nonideal solar sails

TL;DR

This paper investigates the use of nonideal solar sails for asteroid body-fixed hovering, analyzing feasible regions and control strategies through numerical simulations and considering various sail models and asteroid properties.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive nonlinear dynamic model for nonideal solar sail hovering near asteroids and explores feasible control regions considering different sail models and asteroid spin rates.

Findings

Feasible hovering regions depend on sail model and asteroid spin rate.

Optimal sail orientations vary with hovering radius and sail lightness number.

A mission scenario demonstrates the practical application of solar sail hovering.

Abstract

Asteroid body-fixed hovering problem using nonideal solar sail models in a compact form with controllable sail area is investigated in this paper. The nonlinear dynamic equations for the hovering problem are constructed for a spherically symmetric asteroid. The feasible region for the body-fixed hovering is solved from the above equations by using a shooting method. The effect of the sail models, including the ideal, optical, parametric and solar photon thrust, on the feasible region is studied through numerical simulations. The influence of the asteroid spinning rate and the sail area-to-mass ratio on the feasible region is discussed in a parametric way. The required sail orientations and their corresponding variable lightness numbers are given for different hovering radii to identify the feasibility of the body-fixed hovering. An attractive mission scenario is introduced to enhance the advantage of the solar sail hovering mission.