Spinning solar sails driven by reflectivity control have an attractive potential to achieve completely fuel-free space exploration. Reflectivity control system is the one and only fuel-free attitude control system already demonstrated on orbit. The spacecraft system has, however, a critical issue that it is not trivial at all to estimate the attitude maneuverability. The dynamics of the spacecraft is highly affected by various uncertain factors such as the sail deformation and the optical property distribution of the sail surface. In order to address the issue, this paper introduces a methodology of estimating the maneuverability with incorporating the effect by such uncertainty. The present paper first derives an analytical formulation of the maneuverability. The formulation reveals a remarkable fact that only two representative parameters govern the maneuverability. More detailed observation provides many insights into the system's properties. Integration of these insights delivers a methodology to estimate attitude maneuverability and design criteria of the reflectivity control system for spinning solar sails with uncertain sail property.
展开▼
