TY - JOUR A2 - Vadali, Srinivas R. AU - Wawrzyniak, Geoffrey G. AU - Howell, Kathleen C. PY - 2011 DA - 2011/05/05 TI - Generating Solar Sail Trajectories in the Earth-Moon System Using Augmented Finite-Difference Methods SP - 476197 VL - 2011 AB - Using a solar sail, a spacecraft orbit can be offset from a central body such that the orbital planeis displaced from the gravitational center. Such a trajectory might be desirable for a single-spacecraftrelay to support communications with an outpost at the lunar south pole. Although trajectory designwithin the context of the Earth-Moon restricted problem is advantageous for this problem, it is difficultto envision the design space for offset orbits. Numerical techniques to solve boundary value problems canbe employed to understand this challenging dynamical regime. Numerical finite-difference schemes aresimple to understand and implement. Two augmented finite-difference methods (FDMs) are developedand compared to a Hermite-Simpson collocation scheme. With 101 evenly spaced nodes, solutions fromthe FDM are locally accurate to within 1740 km. Other methods, such as collocation, offer more accuratesolutions, but these gains are mitigated when solutions resulting from simple models are migrated tohigher-fidelity models. The primary purpose of using a simple, lower-fidelity, augmented finite-differencemethod is to quickly and easily generate accurate trajectories. SN - 1687-5966 UR - https://doi.org/10.1155/2011/476197 DO - 10.1155/2011/476197 JF - International Journal of Aerospace Engineering PB - Hindawi Publishing Corporation KW - ER -