Attitude and vibration control of a solar sail

The solar sail, a new type of spacecraft that uses only the Solar Radiation Pressure (SRP) for its propulsion, has great application prospect in the pole-sitter mission and deep space exploration. However, because of the large surface-to-mass ratio and the coupling effect of attitude and structure vibration, the study of dynamics and control of solar sail is challenging. This paper investigates the attitude control of a class of solar sails through control boom, and proposes a new vibration control strategy of the solar sail using self-contained cable actuators on the sail surface. Firstly, a rigid-flexible coupling dynamic model of the solar sail system is established by using the velocity variational principle considering the membrane tensioning stress. Then, an attitude tracking controller is designed utilizing the backstepping method, and by using the tensioning cables as actuators controller is designed to suppress the vibration of the sail surface. Finally, numerical simulations are conducted to verify the effectiveness of the methods presented in this paper. Research results show that the dynamic model developed in this paper can describe the dynamic behavior of the solar sail system precisely, and the designed controllers can have the solar sail following the desired attitude trajectory accurately and suppress the vibration of the sail surface significantly.