On Utilization of Solar Sails in Triangular Libration Point Missions in the Earth-Moon System

Abstract

In the real solar system, due to various perturbations, the triangular libration points of the earth-moon system are unstable. However, there are quasi-periodic orbits around them. These orbits show mild instability. Due to the instability, orbit control is necessary for the spacecraft around these points. In the paper, solar sails were taken to fulfill the control. Numerical simulations were made in the earth-moon system. The results showed that taking the surface area to mass ratio of the solar sail as the control parameter can achieve better results than taking the normal angles of the solar sail as the control parameter.

Novel Subharmonic Resonance Periodic Orbits of a Solar Sail in Earth–Moon System

“…In recent years, solar-sail technology has been successfully applied to various missions, such as the Interplanetary Kite-craft Accelerated by Radiation Of the Sun mission by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency [2], the LightSail-1 mission by the Planetary Society [3], and NanoSail-D by NASA [4]. Due to advantageous applications in space mission design [5], solar-sail orbits around the libration points become more attractive: especially in novel orbit construction [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13].…”