Sunjammer: Preliminary End-to-End Mission Design

Abstract

This paper provides a preliminary end-to-end mission design for NASA’s Sunjammer solar sail mission, which is scheduled for ground test deployment in 2015 with launch at a later date and targets the sub-L1 region for advanced solar storm warning. The artificial equilibrium points (AEPs) in the sub-L1 region accessible by the Sunjammer sail as well as solar sail Halo orbits are investigated. Subsequently, the fly-out from an Earth GTO into either a selected sub-L1 AEP or Halo orbit is optimized for a trade-off between the AV to be provided at GTO perigee and the time of flight. In addition, interesting, time-optimal extended mission scenarios are presented to underpin future solar sail mission applications, e.g. transferring to an AEP high above the ecliptic plane for high-latitude Earth observation. All analyses are carried out both for an ideal Sunjammer sail performance as well as for a realistic performance derived from a detailed sail structural analysis. A comparison of the results shows that non-ideal sail properties increase the time of flight of the trajectories by 2.4 - 7.9%.