Optimal Performance of a Diffractive Sail in an Augmented Hohmann Transfer

This paper investigates the performance of a spacecraft equipped with a Sun-facing diffractive sail within a heliocentric mission scenario corresponding to an augmented Hohmann transfer. A diffractive sail is a particular type of solar sail that converts solar radiation pressure into thrust through a large membrane deployed in orbit. However, unlike reflective sails, diffractive sails exploit the properties of a highly engineered thin metamaterial film to generate a thrust vector with specific characteristics that cannot be achieved by a conventional reflective solar sail. Within an optimization framework based on classical variational calculus, this paper analyzes the potential of a Sun-facing diffractive sail with an electro-optically controlled film to minimize the total velocity change required by the augmented Hohmann transfer. Numerical simulations indicate that a sail with a reference propulsive acceleration of about 0.5[Formula: see text]mm/s 2 enables a reduction of the velocity change of a classical Hohmann transfer by roughly 30% in a simplified Earth–Mars or Earth–Venus scenario.