Systematic Construction of Solar-Sail-Based Stopover Cyclers

This work addresses the systematic construction of solar-sail-based stopover cyclers between two bodies. The design of stopover cyclers is based on finding adequate body-to-body transfers with the zero sphere of influence assumption. These transfers strongly depend upon physical parameters that may be different in each trajectory of which the cycler consists. If the solar radiation pressure is the main propulsion system, the problem of finding transfers between the planets has symmetries that allow to predict the transfer time of the travel back from the transfer time of the outgoing journey. In this paper these symmetries are exploited to reduce the computational effort to just computing transfers from the starting to the target body. In case the parameters of the system are the same along the whole cycler, this reduces the computational effort to half. In case these parameters are assumed to change, the results can be used to construct stopover cyclers using only transfers from the starting to the target planet, but with different parameters. Moreover, transfers for different values of the parameters can be rapidly combined to have a global perspective of possible missions. The provided methods are exemplified with prospective cargo transportation missions to the Main Belt with a solar sail.