Initial Trajectory Design of Electric Solar Wind Sail Based on Finite Fourier Series Shape-Based Method

Abstract

Electric solar wind sail (E-sail) is an innovative propulsion system, which can generate low and continuous thrust without any propellant by reflecting ions from the solar wind. Because the propulsive acceleration of E-sail is low and continuous, its trajectory is usually characterized by long flight time. In order to explore more flight plans, rapid trajectory design is useful for preliminary mission analysis and design. This paper presents a method for rapid generation of minimum-time, three-dimensional trajectories for an E-sail using the finite Fourier series shape-based method. Unlike the more conventional electric thruster, the thrust vector of an E-sail is constrained. In order to consider the characteristics of the E-sail thrust, inequality constraints of thrust acceleration are investigated based on a recent thrust model. The numerical simulation results show that the proposed method is useful to quickly design the flight trajectory of the E-sail by considering the actual characteristics of the thrust vector.