Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) Scout

McNutt, Leslie; Johnson, Les; Kahn, Peter B.; Castillo‐Rogez, Julie; Frick, Andreas

doi:10.2514/6.2014-4435

Cited by 92 publications

(55 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…This well-known system yields five natural equilibrium solutions (the L 1 to L 5 Lagrange points). Adding a propulsive thrust force, such as the one generated by a solar sail, to the CR3BP complements these five Lagrange points with an infinite set of artificial equilibrium points (AEPs).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Solar sail Lyapunov and Halo orbits in the Earth–Moon three-body problem

Heiligers¹,

Hiddink

Noomen

et al. 2015

Acta Astronautica

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Solar sailing has been proposed for a range of novel space applications, including hovering above the ecliptic for high-latitude observations of the Earth and monitoring the Sun from a sub-L 1 position for space weather forecasting. These applications, and many others, are all defined in the Sun-Earth threebody problem, while little research has been conducted to investigate the potential of solar sailing in the Earth-Moon three-body problem. This paper therefore aims to find solar sail periodic orbits in the Earth-Moon three-body problem, in particular Lagrange-point orbits. By introducing a solar sail acceleration to the Earth-Moon three-body problem, the system becomes non-autonomous and constraints on the orbital period need to be imposed. In this paper, the problem is solved as a twopoint boundary value problem together with a continuation approach: starting from a natural Lagrange-point orbit, the solar sail acceleration is gradually increased and the result for the previous sail performance is used as an initial guess for a slightly better sail performance. Three in-plane steering laws are considered for the sail, two where the attitude of the sail is fixed in the synodic reference frame (perpendicular to the Earth-Moon line) and one where the sail always faces the Sun.The results of the paper include novel families of solar sail Lyapunov and Halo orbits around the Earth-Moon L 1 and L 2 Lagrange points, respectively. These orbits are double-revolution orbits that wind around or are off-set with respect to the natural Lagrange-point orbit. Finally, the effect of an out-of-plane solar sail acceleration component and that of the Sun-sail configuration is investigated, giving rise to additional families of solar sail periodic orbits in the Earth-Moon three-body problem.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…through the previously proposed Sunjammer mission [3]) and new solar sail initiatives are scheduled for the future, including The Planetary Society's LightSail-1 mission [4] (launch 2016). Additional proposals include NASA's Lunar Flashlight and NEA Scout missions [5].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Solar sail Lyapunov and Halo orbits in the Earth–Moon three-body problem

Heiligers¹,

Hiddink

Noomen

et al. 2015

Acta Astronautica

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“…Despite limitations on the direction of thrust that a solar sail can generate, its propellant-less nature gives solar sailing great potential for long-duration and highenergy missions. Proposed ideas include near-to mid-term missions concepts such as orbits over the poles of the Sun for heliophysics (Macdonald et al 2006), hovering along the Sun-Earth line for space weather forecasting (Heiligers et al 2014;Vulpetti et al 2015), fly-bys of or hovering over asteroids for asteroid exploration and exploitation (McNutt et al 2014;Gong and Li 2014), exploring the Sun-Earth triangular Lagrange points for solar observations and potential Earth Trojans (Sood and Howell 2016) and parking the sail above or below the Earth's orbit for high-latitude navigation and communications (Waters and McInnes 2007) as well as far-reaching ideas such as planetary orbit modification (McInnes 2002). Adding solar sail propulsion to the classical Earth-Moon CR3BP will further demonstrate the potential of solar sailing and potentially open up novel space mission applications in the Earth-Moon system.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extension of Earth-Moon libration point orbits with solar sail propulsion

Heiligers

Macdonald

Parker

2016

Astrophys Space Sci

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This paper presents families of libration point orbits in the Earth-Moon system that originate from complementing the classical circular restricted three-body problem with a solar sail. Through the use of a differential correction scheme in combination with a continuation on the solar sail induced acceleration, families of Lyapunov, halo, vertical Lyapunov, Earth-centred, and distant retrograde orbits are created. As the solar sail circular restricted three-body problem is non-autonomous, a constraint defined within the differential correction scheme ensures that all orbits are periodic with the Sun's motion around the Earth-Moon system. The continuation method then starts from a classical libration point orbit with a suitable period and increases the solar sail acceleration magnitude to obtain families of orbits that are parametrised by this acceleration. Furthermore, different solar sail steering laws are considered (both in-plane and out-of-plane, and either fixed in the synodic frame or fixed with respect to the direction of Sunlight), adding to the wealth of families of solar sail enabled libration point orbits presented. Finally, the linear stability properties of the generated orbits are investigated to assess the need for active orbital control. It is shown that the solar sail induced acceleration can have a positive effect on the stability of some orbit families, especially those at the L 2 point, but that it most often (further) destabilises the orbit. Active control will therefore be needed to ensure long-term survivability of these orbits.

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“…NEA Scout (NASA) [1]). The unique selling point of solar sailing of not relying on an onboard reaction mass makes solar sailing the preferred option for a range of mission applications [2,3].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%