NEO Surveyor: Incorporating Averaged Non-Gravitational Forces into Halo Orbit Station-Keeping
摘要
On its mission to track potentially-hazardous objects, NEO Surveyor will orbit the Sun-Earth L1 Lagrange point in a halo orbit while continuously surveying the sky. Daily momentum desaturation maneuvers (“desats”) and solar radiation pressure (SRP) forces perturb the spacecraft and require mitigation to avoid departure from the orbit. By incorporating time-varying averaged desat and SRP forces into the trajectory design as well as a dynamically-informed station-keeping strategy, the statistical maneuver cost and trajectory position errors are significantly reduced. These results validate the station-keeping strategy in a high-fidelity, ephemeris-based multi-body dynamics model with continuous “low-thrust” accelerations.