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Research Article

Minimum-time rendezvous for Sun-facing diffractive solar sails with diverse deflection angles

School of Aerospace Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
School of Astronautics, Beihang University, Beijing 100084, China
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Abstract

This paper investigates the heliocentric time-optimal rendezvous performance of Sun-facing diffractive solar sails with various deflection angles and acceleration capabilities. Diffractive solar sails, which generate tangential radiation pressure force, are proposed and schematically designed to achieve diverse radiation pressure distributions. The radiation pressure force model and the time-optimal control problem for these innovative Sun-facing diffractive solar sails are established. Utilizing an indirect method and the optimal control law, we explore typical heliocentric rendezvous scenarios to assess the variational trends of transfer time in relation to different deflection angles and acceleration capabilities. The results for Sun-facing diffractive sails in specific rendezvous missions are compared to reflective sails with the same area-to-mass ratio, focusing on transfer trajectory and attitude control. Our findings reveal that diffractive sails exhibit significant advantages over reflective sails, particularly in the context of normal acceleration, paving the way for more efficient space exploration.

Keywords

solar sailingheliocentric rendezvousdiffractive sailtrajectory design and optimization

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Astrodynamics
Volume 8 Issue 4,
December 2024
Pages 613-631
DOI: 10.1007/s42064-024-0207-7
Cite this article:
Chu Y, Gong S. Minimum-time rendezvous for Sun-facing diffractive solar sails with diverse deflection angles. Astrodynamics, 2024, 8(4): 613-631. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42064-024-0207-7

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Received: 09 December 2023
Accepted: 24 February 2024
Published: 28 August 2024
© Tsinghua University Press 2024
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