Aas 15-442 solar sail equilibria points in the circular restricted three body problem with albedo effects

The Circular Restricted Three Body Problem (CR3BP) is investigated together with the effects of solar radiation pressure (SRP) and albedo radiation pressure acting on a solar sail spacecraft in a Sun-Asteroid system. Due to the significant albedo effects experienced close to an asteroid with highly reflective surfaces, the solar sail dynamics change considerably as compared to models investigated in previous work. For approximation purposes in establishing the albedo radiation, the asteroid is treated as a Lambertian diffuse model with characteristics from bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF). As a result of both solar and albedo radiation, a wide range of artificial equilibrium solutions are generated in addition to the classical Lagrange points. Particular attention is given to the solutions around L1 and L2 with varying solar sail lightness numbers and orientation angles. The inclusion of albedo radiation effects indicates that the equilibrium points shift considerably as opposed to the model with SRP only, an important fact to address for any potential missions to bright objects such as asteroids and comets. Stability and controllability are investigated at the equilibrium points of interest, which are found to be unstable but controllable.