High-Fidelity Modeling and Visualizing of Solar Radiation Pressure: A Framework for High-Fidelity Analysis

Abstract

Solar Radiation Pressure (SRP) is the force produced by the impact of sunlight photons on the surface of the spacecraft. This extra force, despite being small, plays an important role on trajectory design and orbit determination. In this paper we present an open-source tool that enables the user to compute high-fidelity approximations of SRP accelerations for a given spacecraft using ray-tracing techniques. The tool also allows the user to compare between different fidelity levels and different models like the N-plate or the cannonball finding a trade-off on the SRP accuracy between computation time and accuracy.