A star-photon sailcraft mission in the Alpha Centauri system

01 Pubblicazione su rivista
Pino Tommaso, Circi Christian
ISSN: 0273-1177

The recent findings of exoplanets have renewed interest in exploration missions of extra-solar star systems. In this context the binary star system of Alpha Centauri A/B plays a scientifically important role. The current paper aims at investigating the capture and the transfer trajectories from A to B performed by a stellar-photon sailcraft, which gives the best performance in long duration missions. The mission has been divided into four phases and minimum transfer time trajectories have been obtained by using a direct optimisation approach. Finally, a preliminary analysis in terms of Zero Velocity Curves has been carried out.

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