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ESA's Solar Orbiter mission trajectory profile for launch in 2013. Thrust arcs are represented with a thicker line than coast arcs
Source publication
A number of interplanetary low-thrust missions have already been flown by many space agencies. Examples of already flown missions based on the use of electric propulsion are Deep Space 1, Hayabusa and SMART-1. Many others are already in the assessment phase or in the development phase itself. In such perspective, it is required by the space agencie...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... model • Atmospheric drag forces • Residual forces A number of low-thrust trajectories from ESA and NASA have been regenerated by using the Trajectory Reconstruction Utility. As an example the trajectory computed to reproduce the work presented in [1] for ESA's Solar Orbiter transfer mission to Venus after a launch in 2013 is presented in Fig. ...
Citations
... The main objective of the Low-Thrust Interplanetary Navigation Tool (LOTNAV) developed for ESA [2] is the support to the Mission Analyst in the performance of navigation and guidance studies over low-thrust trajectories. As a secondary goal, the tool allows the generation of high fidelity low-thrust trajectories by constrained non-linear optimisation. ...
Since the start of its activities back in 2001, DEIMOS Space has provided a wealth of Interplanetary Mission Analysis services both in terms of turn-key products developed for specific purposes and flight dynamics engineering studies applied to different interplanetary space missions. The latter application has covered different mission phases from pre-phase A studies until the advanced mission design stages. Within the first set of activities DEIMOS has developed numerous software suites and applications mainly for ESA (SEPNAV, GREST, STREAM, WATSBI, LOTNAV, GRETCHEN, LODATO, MOONLIB, etc.). In the support to the design of space missions, we have provided support to ESA and to different European Primes and non-Primes to the following: BepiColombo, Rosetta, Cassini-Huygens, Mars Express, Solar Orbiter, SMART-2, PROBA-3, Don Quijote, ExoMars, PROBA-IP, etc. In addition to all that, we have participated in three of the four calls for the Global Trajectory Optimisation Competition (GTOCs 1, 3 and 4) where we have always scored very good rankings and have also participated in the Planetary Society Apophis Mission Design Competition, where we ranked second of 37 proposals.
All the work performed along these years could be only carried out with the help of the developed Mission Analysis tools and techniques that have allowed us obtaining and preserving a privileged position in this field. Some of those are presented in this paper.
... The refinement of the proposed solutions was executed by making use of a local constraint optimiser [3]. The tool performs the optimisation of the selected cost function by means of a direct method and a parameter optimisation of the whole proposed trajectory, playing with the following variables: event times (departure, arrival, swingbys, thrust switches, etc.), departure velocity vector, arrival velocity vectors to all the swingby bodies and to the target body, B-plane impact vectors for all the swingby bodies and the parameters defining a given law on the two thrust angles for each thrust arc. ...
This paper presents the analyses performed by DEIMOS Space S.L. in response to the 1st ACT Competition on Global Trajectory Optimisation issued by the Advanced Concepts Team at ESA. Being the subject of the Contest within one of the main activities performed at the Mission Analysis Section at DEIMOS, it was decided that participating to the Contest on the basis of our expertise and by making use of our tools would be a challenging and motivating test. DEIMOS Space hereby presents a summary of the assessment on the proposed problem based on a synergic approach to Global Optimisation which has rendered a large number of possibilities to hit the asteroid in the conditions proposed in the statement of the problem. Only a small number of them were finally refined until complete convergence. The best solution is based on an arriving retrograde trajectory towards the target asteroid, reached after successfully finding a Jupiter Saturn Jupiter final sequence of swingbys.
... The refinement of the proposed solutions was executed by making use of a local constraint optimiser. The tool [3] performs the optimisation of the selected cost function by means of a direct method and a parameter optimisation of the whole proposed trajectory. ...
