Modelling and optimization of insertion maneuvers at Mars

Insertion maneuvers are used to move a spacecraft from an open orbit (parabolic or hyperbolic) into a closed orbit around a target body. These maneuvers are key components in any space mission considering orbiting a body for a large amount of time, for exploration or landing; the hyperbolic orbit will be the one that will be used to transfer...

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...

Coupled roto-translational motion of the heliogyro applied to Earth-Mars cyclers

Solar sailing is a flight-proven low-thrust propulsion technology with strong potential for innovative scientific missions. The heliogyro is promising sailcraft design that utilizes a set of long slender blades which are deployed and flattened by spin-induced tension and whose orientations can be individually controlled. The main advantages of...

Exploring the Kuiper Belt: Design of trajectories for long-term Kuiper Belt exploration

Previous trajectory proposals with the purpose of exploring the Kuiper Belt have been limited to identifying trajectories to fly by a single pre-selected Kuiper Belt Object (KBO). Furthermore, these proposals were often limited to high-velocity flybys that pass through the Kuiper Belt in a limited number of years, or are based on the assumption...

Propulsive abort trajectory options for a reconnaissance human Mars mission

For a human Mars exploration mission, it is required to minimize the time-of-flight of the interplanetary trajectories to mitigate the adverse effects of the radiation environment and prolonged weightlessness conditions on the health of the crew. Moreover, having a fail-safe provision to return the crew back to Earth in case of a mission abort...

A Rapid Grid-Search Technique for KBO Exploration Trajectories

The Kuiper Belt is considered to be formed by remnants of the original Solar System, that is why exploration missions to that region are susceptible of having an enormous scientific impact. Nonetheless, it is far away from Earth, missions to KBO targets a significant challenge. Additionally, current methods to identify trajectories that...

The Extended Tisserand-Poincaré graph for multi-body trajectory design

The decision on the dynamical model used to design a spacecraft’s trajectory is a fundamental choice influenced by many factors. The complexity of such a model affects the accuracy of the designed trajectory but also the difficulty of the design process. One approach to simplify this task consists of splitting the trajectory design process into...

Cubesat Deployment Trajectories for the Asteroid Impact Mission

Missions to Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) are a growing trend in spaceflight. The interest for such bodies is not only justified by the threat that they represent for the Earth, but also because they are potential sources of extra-terrestrial materials, provide windows to the past of the Solar System and to planetary formation, and offer a good...

Fast computation of SEP transfers to Mars using analytic curve-fit functions

The increasing interest in solar electric propulsion techniques, that enable significant propellant mass savings for a wide class of transfers, has brought about a revolution in the approach to trajectory design and optimization, as a result of the complexity and diversity of the problem. To date, solutions of different nature exist, but...

Characterization of Trajectories to Collect Samples from Europa's Plume

The search for life in other celestial bodies has always been a topic of great interest within the scientific community. The curiosity to know if we are the only ones in the universe or not has driven the development of many engineering projects. This Master Thesis is meant to do its bit in this research field. Europa, a moon of Jupiter, is...

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...

Preliminary design of a crewed Mars flyby Solar Electric Propulsion mission

The goal of this thesis research has been the improvement of a validated, robust low-thrust optimization tool for interplanetary trajectory design, written during the author's internship. This improved tool has then been applied to design crewed Martian flyby missions. Such a mission is a crucial step within the flexible path scenario for human...

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...

Interplanetary Trajectory Design using Dynamical Systems Theory

Instead of the two-body problem commonly used in interplanetary trajectory design, also three bodies can be considered: the satellite, a planet and the Sun. Knowing that planet and Sun orbit one another in almost circular orbits, and the mass of the satellite is negligible compared to the mass of these bodies, the model of the circular...

Transfer strategies to the L3 libration point of the Sun-Earth system

In this contribution, we investigate several trajectory design methods to transfer a spacecraft to the L3 point of the Sun-Earth Circular Restricted 3-Body Problem (CR3BP). Such a study aims at performing an investigation into an area that is so far little explored: the vicinity of L3 has never been the destination of a space mission, and in...