Solar Sail Equilibria in the Elliptical Restricted Three-Body Problem

Abstract

The existence and dynamical properties of artificial equilibria for solar sails in the elliptical restricted threebody problem is investigated.We show that planar two-dimensional equilibrium curves exist, embedded in threedimensional space, in a nonuniformly rotating, pulsating coordinate system. However, due to the stretching of the system plane coordinates and unstretching of the out-of-plane coordinate, the equilibrium surfaces do not exist in the three-dimensional elliptical restricted three-body system. Control in the neighborhood of an equilibrium point is investigated through a pole assignment scheme. This permits practical out-of-plane equilibria in elliptical three-body systems with small eccentricity