Improvements and Optimization of Analytical Guidance Laws for Low-Thrust Trajectory Design

Lower-budget missions often lack significant funding for trajectory design, and generating many-revolution low-thrust trajectories presents a computationally expensive and time consuming optimal control problem for mission designers to solve. This proposal seeks to reduce the computation time and improve the fidelity of semi-analytical low-thrust trajectory design methods through modifications of the Q-Law low-thrust trajectory design algorithm. These improvements will drastically increase the optimality and applicability of the Q-Law algorithm in the mission design process. Additionally, using the improved Q-Law method within existing optimization software will drastically reduce the computation time and improve the solution optimality. The proposed investigation will decrease the cost of low-thrust mission design and could enable smaller missions to eliminate the need for computationally expensive optimization software altogether.

The proposed investigation will decrease the cost of low-thrust mission design and could enable smaller missions to eliminate the need for computationally expensive optimization software altogether.

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