Preliminary design of interplanetary missions is a highly complex process. The mission designer must choose discrete parameters such as the number of flybys, the bodies at which those flybys are performed, and in some cases the final destination. In addition, a time-history of control variables must be chosen that defines the trajectory. There are often many thousands, if not millions, of possible trajectories to be evaluated. This can be a very expensive process in terms of the number of human analyst hours required. An automated approach is therefore very desirable. This work presents such an approach by posing the mission design problem as a hybrid optimal control problem. The method is demonstrated on notional high-thrust chemical and low-thrust electric propulsion missions. In the low-thrust case, the hybrid optimal control problem is augmented to include systems design optimization.


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    Title :

    Rapid Preliminary Design of Interplanetary Trajectories Using the Evolutionary Mission Trajectory Generator


    Contributors:

    Publication date :

    2016


    Size :

    29 pages


    Type of media :

    Report


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English