A Feedback Guidance Law for Multi-revolution Planetocentric Orbital Maneuvering of Solar Sail Spacecraft
摘要
A guidance law for multi-revolution planetocentric maneuvering of a solar sail spacecraft is developed. QUAIL (Q-law Using Angle of Incidence Limits) adapts the highly successful Q-law from conventional low-thrust guidance using a two-stage design. The first stage is a Q-law formulated in modified equinoctial orbital elements which is agnostic of solar sail dynamics, producing an “ideal” thrust direction. This is then altered by a heuristic-based second stage, restricting the “actual” thrust direction to lie within a fixed-angle cone relative to incident light. The “cone angle adaptation heuristic” is a simple addition to the conventional low-thrust guidance pipeline which overcomes the challenge of direction-limited thrust availability inherent to solar sails in planetocentric orbits. Simulations demonstrate that QUAIL creates valid trajectories with minimal tuning, and keeps desirable characteristics of the Q-law. An extended study to optimize time-of-flight is performed using stochastic global optimization of guidance parameters, reducing time-of-flight considerably across a variety of sail loading values. A further set of cases including