Capabilities of Furlable Solar Sails for Asteroid Proximity Operations

摘要

Missions have been proposed inwhich a spacecraft equippedwith a large furlable solar sail transfers to amain-beltnasteroid using the fully deployed sail for propulsion and then performs an inspectionmission at the asteroid with thensail fully stowed.This paper examinesways inwhich the partially deployed sail could instead be used tomaneuver thenspacecraftwhile in the vicinity of the asteroid,with the goal of improving the science observations that could bemade.nMethods are presented for quantifying the performance that can be obtained by taking advantage of the freedom tonselect the active sail area for two types of hovering problems: one in which the spacecraft is to maintain a fixednposition in the rotating sun–asteroid frame and the other in which it is to maintain a fixed position relative to anlandmark on the rotating asteroid surface. In both of these problems, the ability to adjust the active sail area greatlynexpands the range of locations at which the spacecraft can satisfy the specified hover conditions.