Solar sail formation flying on an inclined Earth orbit |
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Authors: | Shengping Gong Gao Yunfeng Junfeng Li |
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Affiliation: | 1. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rutgers University, 94 Brett Road, Piscataway, NJ 08854-8058, USA;2. School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164-2752, USA |
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Abstract: | The versatility of solar sail propulsion can be utilized in the exploration of Earth’s magnetotail. An inclined periodic orbit with respect to ecliptic is possible for a solar sail with its orbital plane in synchronous rotation with the sun. Solar sail evolving on such an inclined orbit is free of Earth shadow. Formation flying of a cluster of sails around such an inclined periodic orbit is investigated in this paper. The solution of the first-order approximation to the linear relative motion is used to qualitatively analyze the configurations of relative orbits. Since the relative motion is unstable, active control is necessary to keep a periodic relative motion. A typical LQR method is employed to stabilize the relative motion. The design method is validated by numerical examples. |
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