Design and applications of novel periodic orbits with solar sail in Earth-Moon system

Periodic orbits in the Earth-Moon three-body system hold significant theoreticaland engineering values for deep space exploration. Solar sail spacecraft, which do not require propellant, show great potential for long-term space missions. Introducing the solar sail propulsion technology in the Earth-Moon three-body system can create more valuable orbits. In previous studies, the state transition matrices of dynamical systems are not found to include the solar sail acceleration term. In this paper, a new solar sail pointing law is proposed based on a simplified non-autonomous dynamical model for the solar sail Earth-Moon circular restricted three-body problem, making acceleration of the solar sail dependent on the sail state vector. On this basis, the Jacobian matrix of the system is derived. This pointing law is applied to the near rectilinear Halo orbit. Using an improved differential correction method in combination with a continuation on solar sail acceleration, new orbit families are generated. Numerical simulations verify the effectiveness of the pointing lawand numerical computation method. Analysis shows that the newly established solar sail periodic orbit families can be used for lunar illuminationand observation of high-latitude lunar regions. Finally, periodic orbits are migrated to a non-coplanar bi-elliptical perturbation model, and the quasi-periodic orbits under perturbation are obtained using the second-order differential correction method. It is shown through analysis that the orbits’ illuminationand coverage performance can be maintained under perturbation. Further calculations of the quasi-periodic orbits corresponding to different initial moments indicate that the closer the Earth-Moon Barycenter (EMB) and the Moon are to the perigee of their orbits, the greater the impact of perturbative factors on the orbit is.