Influence of tapered tether on cislunar payload transmission system and energy analysis

As we know a very useful way to reduce the satellite's cost (especially the launch cost) is to decrease the mass of the satellite. This paper describes a novel configuration for the continuous cislunar payload transmission system (CCPTS), whose tether is made of tapered tether. Compared to the uniform tether, tapered tether has much less inertia moment than the uniform tether under the same conditions of density, ultimate strength, length and mass. So, for the same missions, the CCPTS with tapered tether will expend much less energy. Moreover, this paper builds the energy equation and the dynamic model of the CCPTS with tapered tether. The numerical simulations show that the relative orbit error of the CCPTS is much lower than the relative attitude error of the CCPTS between the tapered and the uniform tether. Furthermore, different tether materials affect the orbit parameters and attitude parameters by different degrees for the same preconditions. The energy analysis verifies that the CCPTS with tapered tether has less energy than with uniform tether.