(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2015-01-05)
Grotte, Mariusz E.
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.