Using Solar Sails to Hover Over Spinning Asteroids

Asteroid body-fixed hovering using nonideal solar sails

Authors:

Zeng et al

Abstract:

Asteroid body-fixed hovering problem using nonideal solar sail models in a compact form with controllable sail area is investigated in this paper. The nonlinear dynamic equations for the hovering problem are constructed for a spherically symmetric asteroid. The feasible region for the body-fixed hovering is solved from the above equations by using a shooting method. The effect of the sail models, including the ideal, optical, parametric and solar photon thrust, on the feasible region is studied through numerical simulations. The influence of the asteroid spinning rate and the sail area-to-mass ratio on the feasible region is discussed in a parametric way. The required sail orientations and their corresponding variable lightness numbers are given for different hovering radii to identify the feasibility of the body-fixed hovering. An attractive mission scenario is introduced to enhance the advantage of the solar sail hovering mission.