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2006 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

Study on Experimental Design and Verification of Attitude/Orbital Control System for a Solar Sail

Research Project

Project/Area Number 17560699
Research Category

Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)

Allocation TypeSingle-year Grants
Section一般
Research Field Aerospace engineering
Research InstitutionKYUSHU UNIVERCITY

Principal Investigator

HOKAMOTO Shinji  Kyushu University, Faculty of Engineering, Associate Professor, 大学院工学研究院, 助教授 (80199463)

Project Period (FY) 2005 – 2006
KeywordsSolar Sail / Attitude Control / Solar Radiation Pressure / Ground Experiment
Research Abstract

First, this research examined the attitude and orbital dynamics of spinning solar sail spacecraft on earth-and interplanetary-orbit, which is investigated for future deep space exploration in Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (ISAS/JAXA). Numerical simulations estimated the influence of its spinning rate and an uncertain offset between its center-of-mass (cm) and center-of pressure (cp) on the attitude variation.
Then, considering an amount of the calculated influence, this research designed and assembled a ground experimental system for validation of an attitude control system for a spinning solar sail. The experimental system simulates a solar radiation pressure (SRP) force using earth gravity force; originally, air flow were supposed to be employed as modeling for SRP, but it was turned out that flow disturbance and vortex easily generates disturbance force and torque for the system. Besides, small inertia force acting its payload mass due to counter effect of sail acceleration is also experimentally simulated through gravity force compensation using a counter balance system. Furthermore, the system can control its cm/cp offset by moving the payload mass placed at the tip of a two-axis gimbaled control boom.
The experimental system verified its fundamental performance as a ground-placed validation setup for a spinning solar sail system, in measuring induced torque and force in each axis for changing the cm/cp offset and spinning rate.

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Published: 2008-05-27  

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