The optimal control for the tethered system formed by an asteroid and a solar sail

This paper focuses on a method of changing the orbit of an asteroid by attaching a solar sail to the asteroid. First, the dynamic model of the tethered system is derived. Legendre pseudospectral method is then used to discretize the system, and the sequence of two quadratic programming is utilized to obtain the optimal control law. Simulation results show that the tethered solar sail can efficiently change the asteroid’s orbit. Moreover, the problem of the tether twining around the asteroid caused by the relative orbit motion between the solar sail and the asteroid can be avoided. Finally, the effectiveness of altering an asteroid’s orbit by different solar sails is analyzed. Simulation results show that when the area of the solar sail is 106 m2, the asteroid can be deflected at 1.227 × 108 m by the solar sail after about 20 years, which is better than the effect of a gravitational tractor.