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Propellantless Sail-Craft Design for the Main Belt Asteroid Exploration Mission

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Propellantless Sail-Craft Design for the Main Belt Asteroid Exploration Mission Propellantless Sail-craft Design for the Main Belt Asteroid Exploration Mission By Liu yufei1), 2), Cheng zhengai1), Huang xiaoqi1), Zhou lu1), Wang li1) 1)The Qian Xuesen Laboratory of Space Technology, CAST, Beijing,China 2) State Key Laboratory of Structural Analysis for Industrial Equipment, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China (Received 1st Dec, 2016) Based on the propellantless characteristic, a multiple main belt asteroid exploration mission in which the solar sail is the only propeller is proposed by China academy of space technology (CAST). The mission aims to explore at least three main belt asteroids in seven years. The process of determining probe objects and the main nodes of the mission trajectory are first presented. To realize the mission, the spacecraft is a square solar sail with the areal density less than 12g/m2, the side length of 160m and the total mass of 200kg. Then the main subsystems of the solar sail are introduced. The cutting and splicing scheme, the fold and deployment scheme and the margin strengthen scheme are designed in the sail subsystem. A new four radius lenticular boom with two inflatable tubules is proposed to reduce the mass and improve the mechanical property. The slot and membrane antenna and the wireless network are used in the communication subsystem. Two mass blocks and four roll stabilizer bars are designed to control the attitude and orbit. The distribution installation thin film solar cells are used in the power subsystem, so that each sensor and actuator which is not in the central body could be supplied power by cells on itself. At last, the properties of the solar sail meet the mission design constraints. Key Words: solar sail, main belt asteroid, mission design, main subsystem 1. Introduction side length of the sail is about 160m and the boom length is In recent decades, solar sails have aroused more and more about 115m. interests in theoretical and experimental research. Since the The main exploration target is the Vesta which is the first successful solar sail mission IKAROS[1] was launched in third huge asteroid and is much nearer the Earth than other big May 2010, it indicates that the solar sail technology has asteroids. The Scientific data in the mission can also be entered into the engineering stage. In fact, many space compared with results in the DAWN mission. The other research institutes, such as NASA, ESA and DLR[2-4] et al. all targets selected in the GTOC(Global Trajectory Optimization have projects to develop the solar sail technology. Competition)[12] asteroid database. In recent years, a mission supported by the solar sail to For optimization of interplanetary transfer trajectory, the explore at least three main-belt asteroids in seven years has force is just the gravity in the Earth influence sphere, and in been designed by China academy of space technology the heliocentric coordinates the forces are the solar gravitation (CAST)[5-11]. The initial idea is that the propellantless solar sail and the solar radiation pressure force. For planetary mission, can fly in the asteroid belt for a long time and there are there are three trajectories satisfied for the seven years abundant valuable targets for the exploration on the small condition. The exhaustion method and the costate initial value celestial bodies. To realize the mission, the basic normalization method are adopted to solve the trajectory consideration for sail-craft is the sail area density, or areal optimal problem. density. Areal density is the total vehicle mass divided by the Table 1. Three chances for the main belt mission. total sail area. The basic parameter defines the capability of Depart time; Arrival The first The second The total the concept as to successfully perform many scientific and time asteroid asteroid time(year) research missions. Some novel design ideas of the solar sail 2020/8/17;2027/8/6 1703 Barry 1831 Nicholson 6.97 include several subsystems such as the sail, the boom, the 2021/12/30;2028/12/7 1089 Tama 1831 Nicholson 6.94 attitude and orbit control, the power systems, and 2021/12/18;2028/9/28 1219 Britta 1831 Nicholson 6.78 communications. The results show that a same second asteroid is used in At first, the process of determining probe objects and the all the three chances and the size of the first asteroid is very main nodes of the mission trajectory are given to introduce the similar, so the last chance will be the final choice. The mission schedule. Then, some special designs in the main sail-craft flies to the asteroid belt in 2021; it meets the first subsystems of the solar sail are described respectively. At last, main-belt asteroid (1219 Britta) in 2024; it meets the second some conclusions of the mission and the solar sail are given. asteroid (1831 Nicholson) in 2026; it meets the third asteroid (Vesta) which is the main science target in 2028. 2. The mission schedule The solar sail is mounted as payload on a launch vehicle In this Main Belt Asteroid Exploration Mission, the areal that is capable of placing it directly into the transfer orbit. The density is necessary to be less than 12g/m2, which means the escape orbit parameters in the geocentric equatorial inertial total mass is 200kg and the area is larger than 16900m2. The coordination are listed in Table2. 1 Table 2. The escape orbit parameters. Type Value Optimal entry time /UTCG 2021/12/10 19:38:51.463 Injection point radius/km 6700 Injection point velocity/km/s 10.91 Injection point position/(km) [-591.1313; 6440.8255; 1748.2363] Parabolic velocity [-9.7810; -2.0805; 4.3577] component/(km/s) The main time node in the flight process is shown in the following table: Table 3. The main time node in the interplanetary flight. Time node Time(MJD) UTCG Comment Depart time 59566.55 2021-12-18 The distance is less Begin to close 60424.19 2024-04-24 than ten million Fig. 2 The angular velocity curves of the pitch angle and the cone angle. Britta kilometer. Closest to The closest distance is 60606.30 2024-10-23 3. The sail-craft project Britta 4621km. The sail-craft includes the central body, four booms, four Begin to leave 60833.98 2025-06-07 Britta triangular sails, the communication subsystem, the power The distance is less subsystem and other subsystems. The approximate mass Begin to close 61246.11 2026-07-25 than ten million distribution is that the central body is 80kg, the sails are 40kg, Nicholson kilometer. and the booms are 40kg. The approach to increase sail area or Closest to The closest distance is 61393.67 2026-12-13 decrease satellite mass can be adopted to cope with the Nicholson 11337km. challenge of decreasing areal density. Because the wider sail Begin to leave 61549.25 2027-05-24 area will result in more strong booms, more difficult Nicholson The closest distance is deployment and decreasing reliability, the better method is to Rendezvous 62041.23 2028-09-27 125km. Then it begin to decrease the mass. The sail membrane is necessary to be made Vesta fly with the Vesta. of new lighter material or to be thinner. The cross section of The total time is 2474.68 days（6.78 years） the booms should be optimized to decrease the mass. It is The trajectory of the total flight process in the most of importance to reduce the mass of the central body. heliocentric ecliptic coordinate system is given in Fig. 1. The The methods include the integrated design for the antenna, the blue arrows represent normal vectors of the solar sail. Based sails and the booms, and using the wireless network to reduce on the trajectory, the angular velocity curves of the pitch angle the weight of the cables. and the cone angle are given in Fig. 2. The pitch angular The solar sail concept is shown in Fig. 3. velocity is less than 7deg/day，the cone angular velocity is less than 2deg/day。 Fig. 1. The trajectory of the total flight process. Fig. 3. The fold and deployment solar sail diagram. 2 3.1. The sails The sails include four triangular sail membrane. The material is 2μm polyimide with 1000A of aluminum in front. The first problem is cutting and splicing the huge membrane. The material film width is only 1.5m, so there are many splicing seams in the sail membrane. The seams will bring wrinkles and performance degradation. Two cutting and splicing schemes are compared. In the first scheme, the splicing seams are parallel to the hypotenuse. There are 54 seams and the angle between the seam direction and force direction is 22.5 degree. In the second scheme, the splicing seams are perpendicular to the hypotenuse. There are 108 seams and the angle is 67.5 degree. The angle is proportional to the tension. Based on the above analysis, the final choice is the first scheme. Fig. 7 Stress and strain curves of 12.5μm polyimide film with a center hole. 3.2. The booms There are four ultra light deployable booms in the sail-craft. One of the best booms for the solar sail is the DLR’s 160m CFRP booms. It consists of two co-bonded omega-shaped 160m carbon fiber half shells with 0.1 mm wall thickness each[13]. At first, the mechanical properties of three different cross-section 67.5 22.5 ° booms with the same material are compared. The first boom cross-section is round, and the radius is 150mm. The second boom cross-section is double “Ω” with two radius 150mm and 100mm.
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