Design and guidance of a multi-active debris removal mission

Abstract

Space debris have become exceedingly dangerous over the years as the number of objects in orbit continues to increase. Active debris removal (ADR) missions have gained significant interest as effective means of mitigating the risk of collision between objects in space. This study focuses on developing a multi-ADR mission that utilizes controlled reentry and deorbiting. The mission comprises two spacecraft: a Servicer that brings debris to a low altitude and a Shepherd that rendezvous with the debris to later perform a controlled reentry. A preliminary mission design tool (PMDT) was developed to obtain time and fuel optimal trajectories for the proposed mission while considering the effect of J2, drag, eclipses, and duty cycle. The PMDT can perform such trajectory optimizations for multi-debris missions with computational time under a minute. Three guidance schemes are also studied, taking the PMDT solution as a reference to validate the design methodology and provide guidance solutions to this complex mission profile.

Orbital Facility Location Problem for Satellite Constellation Servicing Depots

“…The orbital transfer is conducted using Q-law, a Lyapunov-function-based feedback control law first introduced by Petropoulos [42][43][44]. Despite its sub-optimal nature, its ability to rapidly compute multi-revolution low-thrust transfers has made it a popular tool, particularly for large-scale preliminary transfer designs [45][46][47][48][49]. The feedback law consists of determining the optimal thrust direction given the current and target orbital elements.…”

Mixed Optimization Approach for Low-Thrust Perturbed Rendezvous via Neural Networks

“…The RAAN difference between two orbits may continue increasing and thus lead to a failure of iteration that begins with the two-body solution. On the contrary, the spacecraft can be allowed to go to an intermediate orbit of a certain drift rate and change its RAAN indirectly [5], [9], [20]- [24]. Huang [9] proposed an approximate method to evaluate the optimal fuel consumption, and Wijayatunga [5] proposed an approximate guidance calculation for low-thrust transfers.…”

“…On the contrary, the spacecraft can be allowed to go to an intermediate orbit of a certain drift rate and change its RAAN indirectly [5], [9], [20]- [24]. Huang [9] proposed an approximate method to evaluate the optimal fuel consumption, and Wijayatunga [5] proposed an approximate guidance calculation for low-thrust transfers. Such approximations can be applied in the optimization of a multi-debris removal mission.…”