Artificial Lagrange Points for Spacecraft with a Tethered Anchor

Abstract

New artificial Lagrange points for spacecraft with a tethered anchor are presented in this paper. The positions of conventional artificial Lagrange points generated by solar radiation pressure are restricted depending on the sail lightness number. Using a tethered anchor, that restriction can be relaxed. Around the L2 point, the new artificial Lagrange points for spacecraft with a tethered anchor are derived based on the circular restricted three-body problem. The dependence of the position of the new artificial Lagrange point on the parameters such as mass ratio and tether’s length is investigated for spacecraft with a tethered anchor. The trajectories of spacecraft with and without tethered anchors are calculated numerically. Results show that the tethered anchor can halve the offset of artificial Lagrange points. The effect of tethered anchor on the shift of artificial Lagrange point increases if a tether is long and the mass ratio m_anc /m_sc is large.