TITLE:
Station Keeping Strategies for a Solar Sail in the Solar System

AUTHORS:
Ariadna Farres and Angel Jorba
Departament de Matematiques i Informatica
Universitat de Barcelona, Gran Via 585, 08007 Barcelona, Spain

E-mails: ariadna.farres@maia.ub.es,  angel@maia.ub.es

ABSTRACT:
In this paper we focus on the station keeping around an equilibrium
point for a solar sail in the Earth-Sun system. The strategies that we
present use the information on the dynamics of the system to derive
the required changes on the sail orientation to remain close to an
equilibrium point for a long time. We start by describing the main
ideas when we consider the RTBP with the effect of the SRP as a
model. Then we will see how to extend these ideas when we consider a
more complex dynamical model which includes the gravitational
attraction of the main bodies in the solar system. One of the goals of
the paper is to check the robustness of the algorithms in a more
realistic setting and study the effect of errors both in the position
determination of the probe and in the orientation of the sail.