Gyro-Control of a Solar Sailing Satellite
Hendrik Willem Jordaan, Willem Herman Steyn
(Submitted on 29 Oct 2019)
Recent successes in the deployment of sails in space have reduced the risk associated with solar sailing missions. The attitude control requirements for a solar sailing mission is low with only slow attitude maneuvers needed to maintain a stable attitude and produce a required solar thrust. Future science missions will require large attitude maneuvers with a fully deployed sail. This article investigates the current options for attitude control on solar sails and proposes a gyro-controlled solar sailing. This concept uses a spinning solar sail to construct a control moment gyroscope capable to produce large torques. Steering laws for performing attitude maneuvers and simulation results are presented which demonstrates the capabilities of such a solution.
Subjects: Space Physics (physics.space-ph); Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM); Systems and Control (eess.SY)
Cite as: arXiv:1910.13841 [physics.space-ph] (or arXiv:1910.13841v1 [physics.space-ph] for this version)
Submission history
From: Hendrik Jordaan
[v1] Tue, 29 Oct 2019 11:07:32 UTC (373 KB)
