Reinforcement learning-based multi-impulse rendezvous approach for satellite constellation reconfiguration

Abstract

This paper presents a satellite constellation orbital reconfiguration method based on the intelligent multi-impulse rendezvous considering the impulse-magnitude limit. This problem is solved by two steps: the single-target rendezvous trajectory optimization and the multi-target rendezvous mission planning. For single target, the multi-impulse rendezvous problem is transformed into a Markov decision process and solved by a reinforcement learning algorithm. The rewards of the critic networks are used as estimation of fuel consumption, while the actions of the actor networks are used as initial values for further optimization. For multiple targets, an efficient Monte-Carlo tree search method is used to realize the global optimal solution of the satellite constellation reconfiguration problem. Finally, the numerical examples show that the proposed method can rapidly optimize the multi-impulse constellation reconfiguration problem.