Artificial Collinear Lagrangian Point Maintenance with Electric Solar Wind Sail

This article discusses the maintenance of an $L_1$ -type artificial equilibrium point in the Sun–[Earth+Moon] circular restricted three-body problem by means of an electric solar wind sail. The reference configuration instability is compensated for with a feedback control law that adjusts the grid voltage as a function of the distance from the natural $L_1$ point. Two different control strategies are analyzed assuming the solar wind fluctuations to be modeled through a statistical approach.