A long-standing challenge in optimal guidance for orbital insertion of launch vehicles and orbital transfers of spacecraft is how to reduce the transversality conditions in the optimal control problem. The reduction seeks to eliminate the unknown multipliers in the transversality conditions for much improved robustness of convergence and computational speed. This paper injects a new perspective into how to approach the problem. It is shown that, for commonly seen three-dimensional optimal space flight problems, a list of six candidate-reduced transversality conditions can be precompiled (and is done so in the paper). For a given particular problem, the required reduced transversality conditions can be chosen from the list according to which of the final orbital elements are unconstrained by the specified terminal conditions. The two major achievements of this paper are to provide a “prepackaged” solution to this historically difficult problem, and to offer new insight into the interpretation of reduced transversality conditions and how they can benefit the numerical process in finding the optimal trajectory.
Reduced Transversality Conditions in Optimal Space Trajectories
Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics ; 36 , 5 ; 1289-1300
2013-06-27
12 pages
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
Reduced Transversality Conditions in Optimal Space Trajectories
Online Contents | 2013
|Optimal trajectories for space navigation
TIBKAT | 1963
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