Trajectory Optimization Methods for Low-Thrust Kuiper Belt Flyby Missions

The Kuiper belt is one of the last mostly unexplored regions in the Solar System. Exploration of the Kuiper belt can greatly increase humanity's understanding of the Solar System's formation and evolution. The use of low-thrust propulsion for Kuiper belt missions has the potential to improve the payload mass of the mission due to the high...

Cluster-based search space pruning in single leg low-thrust trajectory optimisation problems

Many contemporary interplanetary missions use efficient low-thrust engines to reach the far corners of our Solar System. Their trajectories, however, have proven to be complicated to optimise due to the non-impulsive manoeuvres involved in low-thrust spaceflight. Even though shaping methods have been used extensively to reduce the computational...

Characterisation of Shape-Based Methods and Combination with Coasting Arcs

Low-thrust propulsion's main advantage is its efficient propellant usage. This holds for manoeuvres as well as for major orbital changes, both for LEO/MEO/GEO satellites and for interplanetary missions. In designing such missions, extensive numerical models as well as less demanding analytic first-order approximations can be used. A specific...

Faster Low-Thrust Trajectory Design Through Finite Fourier Series: The effects of a new initialisation strategy

Low-thrust propulsion has gained more popularity over the past few decades because of its high efficiency. Interplanetary transfer trajectories in particular benefit from low-thrust propulsion, considering the typically high Delta V to be achieved. In order to allow a fast design of such missions, first-order, efficient representations of...

Gaussian Process Models for Preliminary Low-Thrust Trajectory Optimization

Low-thrust trajectories can benefit the search for propellant-optimal trajectories, but increases in modeling complexity and computational load remain a challenge for efficient mission design and optimization. An approach for developing models utilizing Gaussian Process (GP) regression and classification is proposed to perform computationally...

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...

Optimisation Strategies for Galilean Moon Tours: Low-Thrust Multiple Gravity-Assist Trajectory Design for GTOC6

Around 1610 Galileo Galilei made his discovery of the four large moons orbiting Jupiter which are referred to now as the Galilean moons. The moons Europa and Ganymede attract a significant amount of scientific interest due to potential present subsurface oceans. As consequence, the design of missions to go there and explore the moon system are...

Application of the Spherical Shaping Method to a Low-Thrust Multiple Asteroid Rendezvous Mission: Implementation, limitations and solutions

Since the development of the exponential sinusoid for low-thrust trajectory design by Petropoulos and Longuski [2004], more shape-based methods have emerged that ease up the work of a mission analyst. These methods are the ideal tool to generate a quick and almost complete overview of a large search space and are useful for producing first...

A Hodographic-Shaping Method for Low-Thrust Trajectory Design

The goal of this research was to develop an analytic low-thrust trajectory design method. The term low thrust stems form the fact that current electric propulsion systems can only produce low amounts of thrust. Nevertheless, these systems can deliver very high amounts of ?V using little propellant, which makes them very suitable for...

Automatic and fast generation of sub-optimal and feasible low-thrust trajectories using a boundary-value pseudo-spectral method

Some problems in Astrodynamics, such as the ones posed in the several editions of the Global Trajectory Optimisation Competition, include both a combinatorial and a trajectory optimisation problem. The combinatorial problem consists of finding the sequence of a fixed number of asteroids that will allow to find the optimal trajectory. The...