Optimization of Low-Thrust, Many Revolution Trajectories Including Planetary Capture and Escape

Calculating optimal spacecraft trajectories for spacecraft with low-thrust electric thrusters presents a unique computing challenge to the practitioner. If the spacecraft is operating in the vicinity of a large gravitating body, the former's trajectory can feature hundreds or thousands of revolutions in order to complete an orbital transfer. This research program will advance protoptype software capable of optimizing these compex trajectories, which can feature thousands of problem decision variables and constraints. The software will feature high-fidelity modeling of electric propulsion hardware and will be capable of computing optimal transfers in the presense of eclipse conditions.

A significant amount of analyst time is currently required to generate many-revolution spacecraft trajectories and often these solutions are numerically suboptimal. This research seeks to deliver a software product that alleviates a significant amount of the manual desgin burden placed on a trajectory design engineer allowing them to dedicate a larger portion of their time to analyzing results and ensuring that mission requirements are being satisfied. This software will be particularly useful for low-thrust spacecraft operating in orbit around a gravitating body and SmallSat applications that nearly always require an electric thruster propulsion module.

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