Abstract Low-thrust trajectories about planetary bodies characteristically span a high count of orbital revolutions. Directing the thrust vector over many revolutions presents a challenging optimization problem for any conventional strategy. This paper demonstrates the tractability of low-thrust trajectory optimization about planetary bodies by applying a Sundman transformation to change the independent variable of the spacecraft equations of motion to an orbit angle and performing the optimization with differential dynamic programming. Fuel-optimal geocentric transfers are computed with the transfer duration extended up to 2000 revolutions. The flexibility of the approach to higher fidelity dynamics is shown with Earth’s J 2 perturbation and lunar gravity included for a 500 revolution transfer.


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    Title :

    Low-Thrust Many-Revolution Trajectory Optimization via Differential Dynamic Programming and a Sundman Transformation



    Published in:

    Publication date :

    2018-01-04


    Size :

    24 pages




    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English