Mapping Autonomous Constellation Design Spaces Using Numerical Continuation

Abstract

In response to an anticipated need for space-based navigation and communication infrastructure in the larger cislunar region, this research explores the use of numerical-continuation techniques to support the design of autonomous Earth–moon constellations. Based on the Linked Autonomous Interplanetary Satellite Orbit Navigation technique, the design of such architectures is a challenging task, due in part to the computational effort required to analyze a single-spacecraft configuration. Although an optimization formulation coupled with a continuation-based method was previously developed by the authors to tackle such issues, the direct application of this technique still remained computationally expensive and was only demonstrated using a heuristically reduced cost function. This paper both simplifies and extends the previous approach by carefully studying the spacecraftplacement problem and decoupling the continuation methods into tractable subproblems. Using this decoupling strategy, exhaustive computational bottlenecks are relieved, and a deeper insight into the global behavior of solution manifolds is achieved. Results from two case studies are presented for the halo and axial periodic orbit families in the restricted Earth–moon system.