A solar sail inverse periodic orbit

Deep space exploration solar sail spacecraft have great potential due to their continuous thrust without propellant. This paper describes an inverse periodic orbit. A two-body frame and an ideal sail model are used to analyze the dynamic conditions needed to produce an inverse orbit and constraints for the inverse periodic orbit. Due to the symmetry in the inverse periodic orbit, the orbital characteristics were introduced based on a semi-periodic orbit. The orbit is located by one side of the sun in the ecliptic plane. However, during each period the sign of the orbital angular momentum changed twice. The particle swarm optimization and differential evolution (PSODE) method was used to optimize control of the sail cone angle. Numerical simulations produced an inverse periodic orbit using a simple control law where the cone angle changed only once in 4.26 years.