Heliocentric Phasing Performance of Electric Sail Spacecraft

This paper investigates the in-orbit repositioning problem of a spacecraft propelled by an Electric SolarWind Sail. Given an initial circular parking orbit, the problem consists in looking for the trajectory that minimizes the time required for the spacecraft to change its azimuthal position, along the initial orbit, of a (prescribed) phasing angle. The problem is solved using an indirect approach and the solution is specialized to a repositioning problem along the Earth’s heliocentric orbit. Finally, the simulation results are used to obtain an estimate of the minimum flight times for a scientific mission towards triangular Lagrangian points of the Sun-[Earth+Moon] system.