The interplanetary missions design of solar sail spacecraft

Abstract

The ballistic design of interplanetary missions consists of a choice of control programs and associated trajectories that ensure the achievement of the objective while meeting a variety of constraints. The use of solar-sails spacecraft for interplanetary missions imposes additional restrictions on mission parameters. These include limitations on the flight duration, the minimum distance from the Sun, the maximum angular velocity of spacecraft's rotation and many others. Obtaining an exact optimal solution to such complex problem is associated with significant theoretical and computational difficulties. In this paper, they describe a technique for designing interplanetary missions of a solar sail spacecraft, based on the use of optimal control laws. An example of the application of the described technique to the calculation of the research missions to the Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and near Sun vicinity is given.