Optimal Impulsive Maneuver Planning for Station Acquisition of Geosynchronous Satellites

Abstract

AbstractStation acquisition is an important phase of a geosynchronous satellite mission. The method developed in this work deals with the planning of tangential impulsive maneuvers for station acquisition while optimizing the total propellant consumption. The problem is formulated as an orbit reconfiguration problem using relative orbital elements with respect to a virtual spacecraft at the target orbit. Differential Evolution is used in conjunction with the linearized relative orbital element dynamics model to identify an initial guess over a defined search space of maneuver times and velocity impulses satisfying the common mission constraints. This initial guess is further used to initiate constrained numerical optimizer to optimize total magnitude of velocity impulse required for the reconfiguration while employing high fidelity dynamics model incorporating various perturbations significant for modeling the dynamics of a geosynchronous spacecraft. Results highlight the practical applicability of the algorithm and certain advantages over the existing literature.