Station-Keeping Approach for Extremely Low Lunar Orbits with Solar Sailing

Renewed interest in cislunar space has created opportunities for sustained operations in extremely low-lunar orbits (eLLOs), where altitudes below 50 km enable close surface proximity. However, these orbits are strongly perturbed by the irregular lunar gravity field, leading to rapid eccentricity growth which results in high station-keeping costs or surface impact. Recent advances in our understanding of the lunar ‘translation theorem’ have revealed predictable behavior in the eccentricity vector, offering new opportunities for efficient control. This paper introduces a two-stage framework for solar sail station-keeping in eLLOs. First, a mixed-integer second-order cone programming (MISOCP) approach leverages the translational behavior of the eccentricity vector to identify orbit and sail configurations favorable for station-keeping. Second, a lightweight sequential convex programming (SCP) formulation refines these into high-fidelity trajectories, enabled by a recently developed lossless convexification of solar sail dynamics. A case study inspired by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission demonstrates that a realistic solar sail spacecraft could be kept indefinitely within the eLLO regime without propellant expenditure, illustrating the potential for approaches leveraging eccentricity vector translations for future cislunar operations.