Solar sail time-optimal interplanetary transfer trajectory design

作     者：Sheng-Ping Gong Yun-Feng Gao Jun-Feng Li 

作者机构：School of Aerospace Tsinghua University Beijing 100084 China 

出 版 物：《Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics》 (天文和天体物理学研究（英文版）)

年 卷 期：2011年第11卷第8期

页      面：981-996页

核心收录：

学科分类：08[工学] 080202[工学-机械电子工程] 0804[工学-仪器科学与技术] 0802[工学-机械工程] 0825[工学-航空宇航科学与技术] 

基　　金：Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant Nos. 10902056 and 10832004) 

主　　题：techniques: miscellaneous    solar sail    solar polar orbit 

摘      要：The fuel consumption associated with some interplanetary transfer trajectories using chemical propulsion is not affordable. A solar sail is a method of propulsion that does not consume fuel. Transfer time is one of the most pressing problems of solar sail transfer trajectory design. This paper investigates the time-optimal interplanetary transfer trajectories to a circular orbit of given inclination and radius. The optimal control law is derived from the principle of maximization. An indirect method is used to solve the optimal control problem by selecting values for the initial adjoint vari- ables, which are normalized within a unit sphere. The conditions for the existence of the time-optimal transfer are dependent on the lightness number of the sail and the inclination and radius of the target orbit. A numerical method is used to obtain the boundary values for the time-optimal transfer trajectories. For the cases where no time-optimal transfer trajectories exist, first-order necessary conditions of the optimal control are proposed to obtain feasible solutions. The results show that the transfer time decreases as the minimum distance from the Sun decreases during the transfer duration. For a solar sail with a small lightness number, the transfer time may be evaluated analytically for a three-phase transfer trajectory. The analytical results are compared with previous results and the associated numerical results. The transfer time of the numerical result here is smaller than the transfer time from previous results and is larger than the analytical result.