Abstract: A novel numerical approach to trajectory optimal problem of solar sailing is proposed based on the interval spine wavelet function. The dynamics model of solar sailing is derived, and the optimized objective function is developed. The optimization algorithm based on interval spline wavelet function and its derivative is briefly introduced. The heart of our approach is to expanding the state and control variables by cubic spline wavelet function decomposition, thus the wavelet advantageous properties of compact representation would inherently make it to capture the discontinuities efficiently and accurately by using a standard nonlinear programming problem solver. The novel approach is demonstrated by a typical actual Mercury rendezvous, the optimal results show that our approach outperforms the pseudo-method in efficiency and accuracy.

Key words: Solar sailing, Trajectory optimization, Interval spline wavelet function