Design and Optimization of Low-Thrust Trajectories with Gravity Assists

Trajectory Optimization for a Mission to Neptune and Triton

“…This can be seen in figure 7.1. The actual optimal thrust direction, in addition to its magnitude, depends on many variables, like planet configuration, maximum thrust, mass etc [McConaghy et al, 2003]. It is a complicated problem which cannot be tackled directly by taking all the possible variations into account [Petropoulos and Longuski, 2004].…”

Evolutionary Neurocontrol: A Novel Method for Low-Thrust Gravity-Assist Trajectory Optimization

“…Finally, even if a solution is obtained, in most cases it represents a local optimum far from the global optimal solution. Recent studies have attacked the problem using either deterministic (such as branch and prune) or stochastic global optimization methods (such as evolutionary algorithms) [4][5][6][7][8].…”

Regularization in Astrodynamics: applications to relative motion, low-thrust missions, and orbit propagation = Regularización en Astrodinámica: aplicaciones al movimiento relativo, misiones de bajo empuje, y propagación de órbitas

“…They derived analytic expressions for the required tangential acceleration and for the angular rate. Practical applications of this solution to optimization problems have also been discussed by McConaghy et al (2003), , and Schütze et al (2009). Izzo (2006) made a significant contribution by formulating and solving Lambert's problem with exponential sinusoids, and presented a systematic treatment of the boundary conditions.…”

“…In order to have a reference solution to compare with, we recovered an example that appears recursively in the literature (Sauer, 1997;McConaghy et al, 2003;Petropoulos and Longuski, 2004): a lowthrust transfer to rendezvous with Ceres including a flyby at Mars. The problem is modeled in two different ways.…”

“…We also include the optimization using GALLOP (Sims and Flanagan, 1999;McConaghy et al, 2003) that Petropoulos and Longuski computed as a reference for their comparison. The launch v ∞ is equal in all cases.…”