Attitude dynamics and control of solar sail with multibody structure

Abstract In the history of solar sail research, numerous methods have been proposed to control the spacecraft attitude. Different in detailed operations, almost all of them rely on solar radiation pressure torques generated by manipulating the offset between the center of mass and the center of pressure. In this paper, a solar sail attitude control method that does not rely on solar radiation pressure is proposed. The method is demonstrated for the case of a quad sail that consists of 4 separate triangular wings. Each wing is able to pitch along its own longitudinal axis. During the pitch, according to the conservation of angular momentum, an internal torque exerted on the remaining part of the sail would be generated. Analysis is conducted regarding the kinematic behavior of the solar sail attitude during wings pitching, based on which two different attitude maneuver strategies are proposed. On one hand, the proposed attitude control method is a new one that no longer relies on the solar radiation pressure. On the other hand, this research also serves as a supplement to some of the existing research, in which relative motion between parts of the sail are involved but the internal torque effect is either neglected or treated as disturbance.