Planar Orbit and Attitude Dynamics of an Earth-Orbiting Solar Sail Under J2 and Atmospheric Drag Effects

In this paper we study planar orbit and attitude dynamics of an uncontrolled spacecraft taking on-board a deorbiting device such as a drag or solar sail. The dynamics is studied in mean Keplerian elements and restricted to rotations around one of the principal axes of the spacecraft. We consider spacecraft with a simplified version of a solar sail with pyramidal shape to restrict ourselves to planar motion, and we investigate stable or slowly-varying attitudes affected by disturbances due to the Earth oblateness effect, solar radiation pressure, and atmospheric drag, with special emphasis on orbits above 800 km of altitude. A sensitivity analysis on the aperture of the sail is performed.

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