A study on simultaneous design of a Hall Effect Thruster and its low-thrust trajectory

Abstract

Space missions involving Hall Effect Thrusters are more and more common, and designs of both Hall Effect Thrusters and low-thrust trajectories require more elaborated process to meet the on-going mission demands. The design of a new Hall Effect Thruster can be improved by considering mission goals for high-demand missions rather than by relying on the current empirical and experimental design process. Moreover, the optimization of low-thrust trajectories involving the Hall Effect Thrusters can also be improved by incorporating the physics of the Hall Effect Thrusters rather than using a simplified model of the given thruster or incorporating the limited existing thruster characteristics. In order to accomplish these two objectives, a simultaneous design environment of the Hall Effect Thruster and its associated low-thrust trajectory is developed. By linking these two disciplines through a direct embedding of the Hall thruster analysis module within the low-thrust optimal control problem, we show that a new Hall Effect Thruster and the associated low-thrust trajectory can be designed simultaneously. As a starting example applying this coupled strategy, a plausible, high-demand mission scenario is attempted with highly simplified assumptions on trajectory optimization, which is the final stage of a geostationary transfer orbit that takes place entirely outside the Van Allen radiation belts.