A study of the guidance method for the Small Solar Power Sail Demonstrator, IKAROS

Abstract

We present the guidance approach for the Small Solar Power Sail Demonstrator, IKAROS. This approach will be used for future solar sail missions. First, we show the range of orbital controllability, which is severely restricted by the attitude constraint from the power and communication. Second, we also present the adaptive guidance method, in which guidance parameters are updated based on the estimation of the spacecraft's parameters such as the area and reflectivity coefficient of the sail. Finally, we evaluate the guidance approach performance by comparing to flight data of IKAROS.