Solar Sail Periodical Orbits around Earth.

Earth-synchronous orbits and Sun-synchronous orbits can be applied in all kinds of fields. Geostationary orbit is a special Earth-synchronous orbit and geostationary orbit resource is limited. Utilization of chemical propulsion or electrical propulsion can generate stationary orbits of different orbit altitudes, which will consume unbearable propellant in engineer practice. A solar sail is proposed to implement Earth-synchronous orbits and Sun-synchronous orbits in this paper. The solar sail is aligned to guarantee that the orbit plane rotates synchronously with the sunlight. The results show that this is possible by designing the solar sail and selecting the orbit parameters. With the assumption that the sunlight is in the Earth equator, the solar sail can evolve in a quasi-stationary orbit with its ground track moving around a point. In fact, the sunlight is in the ecliptic plane. Considering the angle included between the Earth equator and ecliptic plane, the ground track of solar sail will be an area suitable for long time observation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]