WIDE-FIELD INFRARED SURVEY TELESCOPE AND STARSHADE FORMATION FLYING DYNAMICS AT SUN-EARTH L2

Abstract

The formation flying of an occulter with a telescope at the Sun-Earth L2 (SEL2) Libration Point can be a challenging problem. A good knowledge of the Restricted Three Body Problem dynamics is required to understand how these two spacecraft interact with each other in the SEL2 unstable environment, and how other perturbations such as Solar Radiation Pressure (SRP) affect their mutual trajectories. This paper focuses on the transfer trajectories to achieve specific relative positions between two spacecraft as they fly in formation at SEL2, and analyzes the relevance of SRP in this formation, using the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) and the Starshade occulter as an example. Given that WFIRST and Starshade have very different area-to-mass ratios, SRP will affect their motion in different ways, and their relative position can be key to reduce the ΔV cost. In this paper we intend on providing an explanation on how the relative position between both spacecrafts affects the transfer ΔV from one observation to the other using dynamical system theory and Floquet modes.