Abstract
Recently there has been renewed interest in solar sails as an alternative means of space propulsion. Many different attitude control systems have been designed for Solar Sails taking advantage of the centre-of-mass(cm)/centre-of- pressure(cp) offset. Most of these proposed systems are at best theoretical and have not been demonstrated. In this paper we build upon a previous proposed scalable bus-based attitude control system for solar sails, which utilised a trim control mass actuator to change the centre of mass and highly reective panels to create a windmill torque, achieving 3-axis control. As part of testing the proposed system, we have built and demonstrated a trim control mass actuation mechanism for solar sails, taking advantage of an air-bearing table to achieve a virtually frictionless attitude test environment. This is the first known attempt at construction and demonstration of a solar sail attitude control system based on the change in the cm with respect to the cp. In this paper we seek to investigate the control algorithms involved and the obstacles concerned in building a trim control mass actuator for a solar sail. Copyright © 2010 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc. All rights reserved.