This chapter presents a procedure to solve low-thrust orbit transfer with many orbital revolutions. One typical application is a transfer from the Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO) to the Geosynchronous Equatorial Orbit (GEO). Many telecommunication satellites to be located in the GEO ring are placed into an intermediate transfer orbit like the GTO. Just recently these spacecrafts are equipped more often with electric propulsion (EP) systems for the transfer. With respect to state of the art chemical apogee kick engine, EP provides just a small amount of thrust. As a result, the transfer needs many weeks or months and involves many orbital revolutions around the central body. The spacecraft has to be steered properly to match transfer constraints such as the final orbit. An approach is presented to solve this type of orbit transfers. After introducing the required spacecraft dynamics, several astrodynamical aspects like perturbations and environment conditions are highlighted. A direct collocation method is proposed to solve the optimal control problem. Furthermore few practical applications are shown to demonstrate the capabilities of the mentioned strategy.


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    Optimal Continuous Thrust Orbit Transfers

    Thorne, J. D. / Hall, C. D. / American Astronautical Society et al. | British Library Conference Proceedings | 1996



    Minimum-Time Continuous-Thrust Orbit Transfers

    Thorne, James D. | Online Contents | 1997


    Minimum-Time Continuous-Thrust Orbit Transfers

    Thorne, James D. / Hall, Christopher D. | Online Contents | 1997