Solar Sail Near-Optimal Circular Transfers with Plane Change

摘要

Near-minimum time interplanetary trajectories between circular orbits with different orbital planes arerninvestigated. By assumption, the mission is carried out with a solar sail spacecraft, whose performance takes intornaccount the optical characteristics of the sail film and the maximum temperature constraint. In an effort to obtain arngeneral, albeit approximate, solution, the problem is tackled by dividing the mission in two or three phases,rndepending on the value of the inclination change between the initial and target orbit. Each phase is analyzed byrnsolving aminimumtime problemwith an indirect approach, and thewholemission time is estimated as the sumof therncontributions of the elementary phases. The obtained results are then collected through graphs and fitting functionsrnthat can be used effectively to get a good and quick estimate of the main mission parameters, as well as to quantifyrntheir effect on the mission flight time. A comparison of the proposed approach with the optimal results available forrnthe Solar Polar Imager mission confirms the effectiveness of the developed methodology.