Spiral trajectories to the Moon present a difficult trajectory design problem. In this paper we show that the well-known Q-Law guidance algorithm can be leveraged to rapidly produce near optimal, high fidelity trajectories. By combining forward and backward propagated Q-Law, continuous trajectories are generated from an Earth parking orbit to a target Lunar orbit. The Q-Law result can then be refined using direct collocation. To demonstrate this process, we solve a problem inspired by the SMART-1 mission and compare to literature results. Then, an ESPA-class mission scenario is analyzed. We demonstrate that this technique can be used to efficiently explore the trajectory trade space and provide suitable initial guesses for direct optimization.
Rapid Design and Exploration of High-Fidelity Low-Thrust Transfers to the Moon
2020-03-01
8821604 byte
Aufsatz (Konferenz)
Elektronische Ressource
Englisch
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