Attitude Stability and Altitude Control of a Variable-Geometry Earth-Orbiting Solar Sail

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Attitude Stability and Altitude Control of a Variable-Geometry Earth-Orbiting Solar Sail

Felicetti, Leonard / Ceriotti, Matteo / Harkness, Patrick

A variable-geometry solar sail for on-orbit altitude control is investigated. It is shown that, by adjusting the effective area of the sail at favorable times, it is possible to influence the length of the semimajor axis over an extended period of time. This solution can be implemented by adopting a spinning quasi-rhombic pyramidal solar sail that provides the heliostability needed to maintain a passive “sun-pointing” attitude and the freedom to modify the shape of the sail at any time. In particular, this paper investigates the variable-geometry concept through both theoretical and numerical analyses. Stability bounds on the sail design are calculated by means of a first-order analysis, producing conditions on the opening angles of the sail, while gravity gradient torques and solar eclipses are introduced to test the robustness of the concept. The concept targets equatorial orbits above approximately 5000 km. Numerical results characterize the expected performance, leading to (for example) an increase of $2200 km / yr$ for a small device at geostationary Earth orbit.