Autonomous attitude maneuver planning in asteroid exploration missions

Abstract

During the asteroid exploration mission, attitude maneuver is subjected to various constraints, such as geometric constraints, dynamic constraints etc. To accomplish rapid maneuver from the initial attitude to the target attitude under the complex system constraints, autonomous attitude maneuver planning problem should be considered. This article fully considers the constraints in deep space environment, and describes the maneuver process in three-dimensional space to path planning in two-dimensional plane where the constraints are translated to some obstacles in this plane. To promote the attitude maneuver efficiency and decrease the time cost, an attitude path planning algorithm based on the genetic algorithm was proposed. Take the asteroid exploration mission Chang'e II as example, simulation results show that this method not only meets the previous constraints but also effectively gives the attitude maneuver path.