RESEARCH ON THE LARGE-ANGLE MANEUVER OF THE FLEXIBLE SOLAR SAIL SPACECRAFT

Solar sail is a new type of spacecraft for deep space exploration, which flies by the sunlight pressure. The attitude control plays an important role in the mission because of its coupled orbit-attitude effect. However, the large moment of inertia and large flexible structure leads to some difficulties in attitude control. Some special control methods, such as centric control boom and tip-mounted vanes, are used for reduce the control consumption and improve the performance. This paper establishes the reduced dynamic model of a flexible solar sail with foreshortening deformation, coupled with its attitude and vibration. Because of the special structure of the solar sail, the attitude maneuver could be achieved by the control torque about the center, and also by the control force at the tips. As usual, large angle maneuvering will lead to the vibration of flexible structure when the time optimal control of solar sail maneuvering is considered. Compared with the method of control torque, the control force at tips could reduce the structural vibration efficiently. The control force at tips also can suppress the large amplitude and sustained vibration of the attitude.