Planning safe rendezvous trajectories for spacecraft within multi-body systems

Enabling safe rendezvous between two spacecraft is the key to enabling more complex missions such as in-space assembly, transfer of crew and supplies, servicing, and refueling. Multi-body gravitational environments such as cislunar space are also rapidly becoming the new frontier for exploration, with the Lunar Gateway planned for the Earth-Moon L2 Lagrange point, observatories at the Sun- Earth Lagrange points, or robotic missions to the Jovian moons. Future rendezvous in these environments may involve two phases: a far-range approach to the general vicinity of a moving target, and close-range rendezvous to reduce relative distance and speed for proximity operations. Just as golfers adjust their strategy and use different clubs as they near the putting green, trajectory design requires different formulations for far-range approach and near-range rendezvous. While rendezvous has become nearly routine in (LEO), the dynamics in multi-body systems are chaotic with no analytical solutions, yielding a more complex and sensitive solution space. Relative motion between spacecraft in the CR3BP is still not well understood, varying significantly depending on the type of orbit and specific location. Mitigating collision risk throughout both phases adds further complexity. To address these various challenges, I intend to focus on developing a new approach for rapidly designing safe and efficient rendezvous trajectories in multi-body systems. I plan to develop new technology for designing safe spacecraft trajectories for far-range approach and then close-range rendezvous in a multi-body system using motion primitives by completing the following objectives: 1. Construct two separate libraries of primitives summarizing motion in each of the far-range approach and close-range rendezvous phases in a multi-body system using clustering. 2. Adapt heritage LEO rendezvous safety indices to a multi-body environment, incorporating dynamic position uncertainty and relative velocity magnitude to quantify risk of collision. 3. Build a hybrid motion primitive graph that is searched to generate initial guesses for trajectories linking far range approach and close-range rendezvous arcs. 4. Formulate a corrections problem to generate continuous, safe, and fuel-efficient rendezvous trajectories from the primitive-based initial guess. The infrastructure required for the exploration of cislunar space and beyond necessitates the development of new technologies to rapidly identify safe rendezvous trajectories to handle increasing traffic with the same routine as current LEO operations. These objectives support the "EXPLORE: In-space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing (ISAM) and Rendezvous, Proximity Operations, and Capture (RPOC)" Envisioned Future with applications to "EXPLORE: Autonomous Systems and Robotics" as laid out in the NSTGRO proposal, directly applicable to listed items like in-space refueling and fluid transfer, maintenance and repair, and manufacturing and assembly. Broader goals this proposal could support Great Observatories servicing, human exploration vehicle servicing and assembly, and space fleet servicing and upgrade. This proposed work would supply a new approach for rendezvous trajectory design that mitigates collision risk with the potential to enable more advanced mission design, reduce reliance on ground support through supporting increased autonomy, and rapidly respond to contingency events.

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