Home▸Aerospace Engineering & Orbital Mechanics▸Solar Sail Trajectory 2D: Photon-Pressure Orbital Steering

Solar Sail Trajectory 2D: Photon-Pressure Orbital Steering

2D top-down companion to the solar-sail orbit simulator: the same photon-pressure and gravity equations integrated in plan view, with a live radius/speed/energy readout and a fading orbit trail that makes the inward/outward spiral geometry easy to read at a glance.

Aerospace Engineering & Orbital Mechanics2DModerate60 FPS📱 Mobile-adapted⇄ 3D version
2d-solar-sail-trajectory ↗ Open standalone

This is the 2D companion to the 3D solar-sail simulator: the identical photon-pressure and two-body-gravity equations of motion, integrated in plan view instead of orbited around in a 3D scene. Sunlight intensity falls off as the inverse square of distance, a tilted reflective sail turns a fraction of that momentum flux into thrust, and the component of that thrust along the direction of travel pumps orbital energy in or out depending on the sign of the pitch angle — visible here as a spiral trail winding outward or inward around the sun, alongside a live specific-orbital-energy readout that turns the same physics into a number you can watch cross zero (an escape trajectory) or climb toward a tighter bound orbit.

⚙ Under the hood

2D top-down solar-sail orbit simulator: photon-pressure thrust from a tilted reflective sail combined with two-body gravity, integrated with sub-stepped Euler integration for stability at high time acceleration, with live orbital radius, speed, thrust, elapsed time and specific-orbital-energy readouts.

solar sailorbital mechanicsphoton pressureradiation pressurespacecraft propulsionorbital energy

2D · HTML5 Canvas 2D · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install

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