A solar sail is one of the most promising space exploration system because of its theoretically infinite specific impulse using solar radiation pressure (SRP). Recently, some researchers proposed "transformable spacecrafts" that can actively reconfigure their body configurations with actuatable joints. The transformable spacecrafts are expected to greatly enhance orbit and attitude control capability due to its high redundancy in control degree of freedom if they are used like solar sails. However, its large number of input poses difficulties in control, and therefore, previous researchers imposed strong constraints to limit its potential control capabilities. This paper addresses novel attitude control techniques for the transformable spacecrafts under SRP. The authors have constructed two proposed methods; one of those is a joint angle optimization to acquire arbitrary SRP force and torque, and the other is a momentum damping control driven by joint angle actuation. Our proposed methods are formulated in general forms and applicable to any transformable spacecraft that has front faces that can dominantly receive SRP on each body. Validity of the proposed methods are confirmed by numerical simulations. This paper contributes to making most of the high control redundancy of transformable spacecrafts without consuming any expendable propellants, which is expected to greatly enhance orbit and attitude control capability.

翻译：太阳帆利用太阳光压（SRP）可获得理论上无限高的比冲，是最具前景的太空探索系统之一。近期，研究者提出了配备可动关节、能够主动重构自身构型的"可变形航天器"。若将其用作太阳帆，因其控制自由度具有高度冗余性，可望显著增强轨道与姿态控制能力。然而，输入量众多导致控制困难，因此先前研究通过施加严格约束限制了其潜在控制能力。本文研究了可变形航天器在太阳光压作用下的新型姿态控制技术：作者构建了两种方法——其一为获取任意SRP力与力矩的关节角优化方法，其二为基于关节角驱动的动量阻尼控制方法。所提方法采用通用形式表述，适用于任意各本体前表面能主要接收SRP的可变形航天器。数值仿真验证了所提方法的有效性。本文为充分利用可变形航天器高控制冗余性（无需消耗任何推进剂）做出贡献，预计将大幅提升其轨道与姿态控制能力。