The paper discusses the feasibility of using solar radiation pressure (SRP) toperform collision avoidance maneuver. Usually, an alert about possible collisionwith another satellite or space debris is received a few days in advance, givingample time to design and perform an avoidance maneuver. For a propulsionlesssatellite above altitude of about 800 km, SRP is the only natural force that can beused for orbit maneuver. The proposed approach is to change the sun-pointingarea by proper attitude control such that the semi-major axis will change during acomplete revolution. This causes a change in the orbital period, and eventuallyafter enough revolutions the satellite avoids the collision. The challenge is toimplement the maneuver for most satellites, without requiring an addition ofdedicated solar wings, and without losing too much power generation capability.The paper presents details of the proposed control logic. Several methods are usedto compute the change in the orbit. The computation is based upon simplifiedanalysis and verified by numerical simulation. Numerical results for severalplatforms are presented. The results show that this maneuver is feasible underseveral conditions, regarding the shape of the satellite (mainly the ratio ofmaximum cross-section area to the minimum one), and regarding the anglebetween the sun and the orbital plane.
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