An Interplanetary Mission Design of a Solar Sailing CubeSat to Mars

Abstract

Abstract While solar sailing missions have been developed in the past, orbital solar sailing missions are limited in number. Increasing access to the solar system can be achieved by leveraging the potential of solar sailing spacecraft. A feasibility study is performed to analyse a controlled solar sailing mission to Mars using a CubeSat platform. The proposal to send a solar sailing CubeSat to Mars would be revolutionary in delivering small payloads to the red planet by harnessing the solar radiation pressure emitted from the Sun. By utilising solar sailing and aerocapture techniques in the mission design, the need for chemical propulsion for transfer and capture is greatly reduced, minimising launch mass and maximizing payload mass efficiency. In this study, investigations were carried out as mission analyses in the area of trajectory architecture and subsystem overview for systems available today and in the future. The influence and evolution of trajectories under gravitational and environmental conditions on Mars and the interplanetary transfer were scrutinised individually as relevant restricted dynamic systems. For a chosen insertion orbit, several feasible trajectories to Mars based on different solar sail systems were investigated, including optimised ballistic trajectories and the Sundiver transfer for solar sails. For the interplanetary trajectories, the planetary capture manoeuvre of the spacecraft to a serviceable orbit using aerobraking capture is evaluated. The final trajectory design features minimum-time optimisation for the interplanetary transfer of a solar sailing spacecraft from Earth to Mars. As the selected spacecraft platform is limited to low-thrust solar sailing propulsion, severe performance limitations apply to this mission. This work aims to highlight possible interplanetary trajectories for present and future small satellite platforms despite these limitations by using dynamical orbital simulation models.