Solar Sails and Asteroids - A Heavenly Match

Many current and planned missions are visiting and studying asteroids. One type of spacecraft that is sometimes discussed is solar sail spacecraft, which have a unique ability to 'hover' in place above various points near asteroids. They accomplish this by using their sail to balance photon pressure from the sun with gravitational acceleration from both the sun and the nearby asteroid.

Our new paper, Solar Sail Equilibria with Albedo in the Circular Restricted Three Body Problem, investigates the additional perturbation of reflected light from the asteroid an how it affects these equilibrium points. As you may expect, larger solar sails magnify the impact of albedo effects, and allow solar sailing missions to hover in regions that are not accessible if this perturbation is ignored.

Please joint me in congratulating Mariusz Groette, the paper's principal author, on his first journal publication!

Image credit: Japan Times