Solar Sail Equilibria with Albedo Radiation Pressure in the Circular Restricted Three Body Problem

Author(s)
Grotte, Mariusz E.
Advisor(s)
Holzinger, Marcus J.
Editor(s)
Associated Organization(s)
Organizational Unit
Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering
The Daniel Guggenheim School of Aeronautics was established in 1931, with a name change in 1962 to the School of Aerospace Engineering
Supplementary to:
Abstract
In this paper the albedo radiation pressure (ARP) is investigated in the circular restricted three body problem (CR3BP) for a system consisting of the Sun, a minor body and a solar sail. The analytical framework is provided with extension to the solar radiation pressure (SRP) theory. The minor body is treated as Lambertian with bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) for approximation purposes. In this study it is found that ARP dominates SRP in a volume around the minor body which extends to L1 and L2, characterized as the region of influence (RoI) with an analytically defined boundary. Numerical simulations show that the inclusion of albedo effects generates new locations of artificial equilibrium points nearby the minor body, an important fact to address for solar sail missions to asteroids and comets. Local stability and controllability at equilibrium points are investigated and the system is found to be unstable but controllable in general when solar sail attitude angles are chosen as control inputs. Furthermore, equilibrium points along the RoI boundary are found to be Lyapunov stable.
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Date
2015-01-05
Extent
Resource Type
Text
Resource Subtype
Masters Project
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