Section: New Results

Time-optimal deorbiting maneuvers of solar sails

Participants : Jean-Baptiste Caillau, Lamberto Dell'Elce, Jean-Baptiste Pomet.

Increasing interest in optimal low-thrust orbital transfers was triggered in the last decade by technological progress in electric propulsion and by the ambition of efficiently leveraging on orbital perturbations to enhance the maneuverability of small satellites. This work was aimed at investigating time optimal propellantless deorbiting maneuvers in low-Earth orbit using solar sails. The solution of this problem was achieved by doubly averaging the optimal control Hamiltonian with respect to both satellite and Sun longitudes. Initial conditions for the osculating trajectory were inferred via a near-identity transformation that approximates the quasi-periodic oscillations of both state and adjoint variables [61]. The outcomes of the study were presented at the 4th KePASSA meeting in Logrono [18].