A solar sail is being considered for various solar system missions, such as a comet rendezvous and a planetary sample return. Such missions might include a planetocentric escape or capture trajectory segment. This paper considers a method for calculating time optimal planetocentric solar sail spiral trajectories to near escape and orbit to orbit transfers. A number of examples illustrate trajectories generated with a computer program, SUNSPOT, based on this analysis.
Optimal solar sail spiral to escape
Astrodynamics Specialist Conference
1977-09-01
Conference paper
No indication
English
Optimal Counter-Intuitive Solar Sail Escape Trajectories (AAS 04-279)
British Library Conference Proceedings | 2005
|Optimal solar sail planetocentric trajectories
NTRS | 1977
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