Development of Oscillation-Free Attitude Maneuvering System for Spinning Solar Sail

Abstract

Solar sail is one of the promising propulsion systems for future deep space exploration missions as it does not require any fuel to acquire propulsive force. Although folding method and deployment mechanism of the sail have been intensively developed, attitude control of the solar sail, which is necessary for the orbital control by the solar sail, has not been much studied. This paper discusses the attitude dynamics and the control method of a spinning type solar sail spacecraft. The spinning type solar sail, where the sail equipped around the spacecraft hub is to be deployed and extended by centrifugal force, has no rigid structure supporting its membrane. This type of mechanism has the advantage in its simple and lightweight structure, however, the attitude control is difficult due to the flexibility of the membrane. In this paper, we introduced a mathematical dynamics model including first oscillation mode of the membrane which can handle coupled motion of a rigid spacecraft and a flexible membrane, and analytically developed a controller that can avoid unnecessary oscillatory motion. The performance of the controller was verified by numerical simulations using more precise multi-particle numerical model.