Optimal Impulsive Collision Avoidance in Low Earth Orbit

Abstract

This paper presents a high-accuracy fully analytical formulation to compute the miss distance and collision probability of two approaching objects following an impulsive collision avoidance maneuver. The formulation hinges on a linear relation between the applied impulse and the objects’ relative motion in the -plane, which allows one to formulate the maneuver optimization problem as an eigenvalue problem coupled to a simple nonlinear algebraic equation. The optimization criterion consists of minimizing the maneuver cost in terms of delta- magnitude to either maximize collision miss distance or to minimize Gaussian collision probability. The algorithm, whose accuracy is verified in representative mission scenarios, can be employed for collision avoidance maneuver planning with reduced computational cost when compared with fully numerical algorithms.