Low-thrust to solar-sail trajectories: A homotopic approach

摘要

This paper describes a novel method to compute minimum-time solar-sail trajectories starting from a given lowthrust solution. The methodisbasedonthe useofhomotopy and numerical continuation. Homotopyisusedtolink the low-thrust with the solar-sail optimal control problem. Numerical continuation is used to compute the optimal solarsail solution, starting from a given low-thrust planar solution, which is normally easy to find. Planar solar-sail trajectories are computed by means of the homotopic approach. These solutions are used to compute, in a singleshooting approach, three-dimensional solar-sail trajectories, for transfer scenarios involving a small change of the orbital inclination. The proposed homotopic approachistested againsta conventional approach, basedon the useofa genetic algorithm. Numerical test cases are performed both on Earth-Mars and Earth-Apophis rendezvous. The results show that the proposed method is advantageous, in terms of accuracy of the solution and computational time.