Development of an Improved Spherical Shaping Method for High-Inclination Trajectories

Over the past years, numerous missions for spacecraft with low-thrust propulsion have been planned to include large orbital plane changes. In order efficiently generate and evaluate orbits for such missions, use can be made of the spherical shaping method proposed by Novak. When inclinations larger than 15 degrees are present however, the error...

Asteroid Transfer and Capture into a Heliocentric Orbit in the Vicinity of the Earth-Moon System

The idea of capturing an asteroid has gained more and more attention in recent years, sparked by rapid technological development and the growing general interest into the subject, both by scientists and commercial parties. The focus of this thesis project lies on transferring a near-Earth asteroid (NEA) from its original orbit to a safe, stable...