Active Solar Sail Designs for Chip-Scale Spacecraft

Centimeter-scale spacecraft, known as ”Chipsats,” have very high surface-area-to-mass ratios, which accentuates solar radiation pressure (SRP) effects. In contrast to traditional. large solar sails, chip-scale solar sails have the potential to be highly agile in terms of attitude because of their structural rigidity and low moments of inertia. This ability to easily reorient a solar sail greatly expands the orbits that a solar-sail spacecraft can achieve. Solar sail actuation through electrochromic surfaces or MEMs mirrors represents an interesting, low-power way to further extend the capability of chip-scale solar-sail spacecraft. However, there remain a number of challenges. In particular, most of these technologies are on/off and have limited, highly nonlinear behavior. Ensuring that an active solar sail of this type performs as desired demands a systems-level perspective on dynamics and control design