Solar Sail Three-Body Transfer Trajectory Design

This paper discusses design methods of solar sail transfer trajectories in Hill's restricted three-body problem. Based on the premise that the sail attitude is kept fixed with respect to the sunlight, the concepts of the general energy constant and solar sail invariant manifolds are proposed. The invariant manifolds are used to design transfer trajectories from Earth orbits to equilibrium points and trajectories between equilibrium points. Firstly, the general energy constant is employed to evaluate the energy requirement analytically for transfer trajectories from Earth orbits to equilibrium points. It is compared with a direct transfer using a rocket propellant as power source, and eventually the conclusion is reached that a velocity increment of hundreds of meters per second could be saved. For no-impulse transfer trajectories, active control and passive flying stage are incorporated to achieve transfer trajectories. The design problem is converted into a parameter optimization problem, and different objective functions are optimized for comparisons and analysis. The results of comparisons show that the total transfer time is insensitive to different objective functions. Finally, using the symmetry of the dynamical system, the invariant manifolds are patched to develop symmetrical transfer trajectories between symmetrical equilibrium points. Simulations are given for each case to validate the design method.