Thrust model and guidance scheme for single-tether E-sail with constant attitude

In its typical arrangement, an Electric Solar Wind Sail (or E-sail) consists of a grid of long tethers charged by means of a high-voltage source that creates an electrostatic sheath, while an electron emitter is used to remove trapped electrons. Such a grid of conducting tethers enables the generation of a thrust by deviating the charged particles coming from the Sun with which it interacts electrostatically. However, the difficulty of deploying and maintaining stretched such large structures has been leading the scientific community to consider simpler configurations, such as the one in which the E-sail consists of a single spinning tether. This Short Communication fits into this context, by first describing the thrust and torque vectors of a single-tether E-sail. A drawback of the single-tether arrangement is that it is more difficult to maneuver than a multi-tether configuration, because a modulation of the electric voltage, which is one possible means of controlling the attitude of a multi-tether E-sail, would not enable the generation of any control torque. For this reason, this work also proposes a guidance scheme for orbit raising or lowering scenarios, in which the tether is alternately charged and discharged while the inertial direction of the spacecraft spin axis always remains unchanged. (c) 2023 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.