This paper presents a planetary elliptic displaced orbit (PEDO) for a solar sail with reflectivity control devices (RCDs). The problem of multiple solar sail formation flying in which the leader follows the PEDO is investigated. The trajectory of the leader is not affected by that of the followers, whereas each follower needs to know the state information of the leader to achieve formation configuration. An undirected and connected graph is used to describe the communication topology among the followers, and an event-triggered coordinated control algorithm is proposed. With this algorithm, each follower does not need to maintain continuous communication with other followers, reducing communication burden. Additionally, the existence of Zeno behavior is excluded by theoretical analysis. Finally, numerical simulations are performed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

This work is published on Acta Astronautica 184(2021):286-298.