Solar sailing fundamentals with an exploration of trajectory control to lunar halo orbit

This paper covers the basic physics of solar sailing and then explores practical guidance techniques for controlling solar sailing spacecraft on the earth-moon halo orbit entry manifolds expected to be used by NASA’s Lunar Gateway. A four body (Sun, Earth, Moon, spacecraft) simulation is utilized to generate the resultant trajectory performance. Biases to the reference manifold trajectories are derived to center spacecraft acceleration capability within the limited solar sailing acceleration envelope, and improvements in performance are demonstrated.