An integrated simulation system for operating solar sail spacecraft

An integrated simulation system for solar sail spacecraft with individually controllable elements(SSICE) is investigated in this paper, including the modelling of power management, thermal control, attitude control, umbra prediction, and orbit prediction subsystems. Considering the self-control and reactivity subsystems, an agent based method is applied to develop the subsystem models. Each subsystem is an individual agent component, which manages itself autonomously and reacts to the requirements from other agents. To reduce computing burden on a specified computer and improve the suitability and flexibility of the integrated simulation system, a distributed framework is employed in the system by deploying agent components on different computers. The data transmission among agents is based on the transmission control protocol/Internet protocol(TCP/IP). A practical example of sun pointing is used to test the operating effect of the integrated system and the working condition of subsystems. The simulation results verify that the integrated system has higher sun pointing accuracy, quicker dynamical response to variations of the lighting, attitude and temperature and fewer computing resources with effective and accurate subsystems. The integrated system proposed in this paper can be applied to solar sail design, operation, and mission planning.