Feasibility Study of Sun Occultation Missions Using Natural Bodies

Understanding the solar corona and its composition can provide new insights regarding the temperature and the magnetic field of the Sun. The light coming from the corona is more than a million of times weaker than the direct light from the Sun; consequently observing the corona is only possible when the Sun is obscured. From ground, total solar eclipses offer a good opportunity to observe the corona; however, these events only occur every 18 months on average, lasting typically only for a few minutes. The goal of this paper is to perform a feasibility analysis of a Sun occultation mission using Earth as an occulter. However, the occultation zone created by the Earth does not follow a Keplerian trajectory, causing satellites placed in this region to quickly drift apart from the target area. To increase the number of revisits while optimizing the propellant budget, we propose optimal trajectories in the Sun-Earth-Spacecraft circular restricted three body problem that account for scientific and engineering constraints such as limited power budget and mission duration. Chemical Propulsion, Electric Propulsion and Solar Sailing configurations are compared in terms of performance and mission feasibility, revealing how 20 hours of corona observations per cycle would be possible with 0.25 km/s with a revisit of the occultation zone every 35 days. In addition to that the solar sail was proven to be an interesting alternative to chemical and low-thrust propulsion systems