The Joint Pareto Envelope of Heliocentric Circular Displaced Non-Keplerian Orbits Under the McInnes Optical Sail Force Model
Ansh Pathak - 2026 - Preprint
Heliocentric displaced non-Keplerian orbits (NKOs) enable solar-observation, high-latitude Earth-observation, and space-weather mission concepts that no Keplerian orbit can access - but prior feasibility maps rely on an ideal reflector. This work computes the joint Pareto envelope of achievable displacement and minimum transfer time under the full six-coefficient McInnes optical force model, together with a controllability penalty map across the (ρ, z) parameter space. The optical model raises the required lightness number by a median factor of 1.23 relative to the ideal reflector, and its 55.5° thrust-cone ceiling removes 4.9% of the ideal-feasible territory of the Earth-synchronous family relevant to sub-L1 space-weather missions. Across two decades of sail loading (5–150 g/m²), the minimum time to reach the displacement envelope from a 1-au parking orbit is nearly invariant at 0.36–0.39 years. Built on an open-source pseudospectral optimal-control pipeline (CasADi + IPOPT) with 750 converged transfers at 100% solver convergence.
- 55.5° - Thrust-cone ceiling · optical model
- ×1.23 - Median lightness penalty vs ideal
- 750 - Converged minimum-time transfers
- 0.36–0.39 yr - Time to envelope · 5–150 g/m²