New Class of Optimal Plane Change Maneuvers

Abstract

For planetary satellite orbiters (such as the Europa Orbiter Mission) and planet orbiters (such as the Mercury Messenger Mission), third-body forces can induce large changes in orbital elements over one orbit. As a result, transfers involving an ellipse cannot be considered without taking these forces into account, and two- and three-impulse transfers must model these effects at larger distances from the central body. A new use of third-body perturbations is presented to effect plane changes. It is shown, in particular, that large plane changes can be obtained by using only two impulsive maneuvers and a proper timing of the first burn. The resulting plane change maneuvers are shown to be optimal over classical one-impulse maneuvers for large enough inclination change values, replacing the classical optimality of bielliptic transfers (as compared to one-impulse plane changes) in the case of environments perturbed by a large, third body. The investigation is performed by solving an optimization problem with constraints and using the Hill three-body problem to describe the underlying dynamics. Savings on the order of 25% are obtained when compared to the one-impulse transfers for plane changes of ∼60 deg, and plane changes of ′180 deg are shown to be possible without escaping.