Design of Low-Thrust Gravity Assist Trajectories to Europa
Abstract
This paper presents the design of a mission to Europa using solar electric propulsion as main source of thrust. A direct transcription method based on Finite Elements in Time was used for the design and optimisation of the entire low-thrust gravity assist transfer from the Earth to Europa. Prior to that, a global search algorithm was used to generate a set of suitable first guess solutions for the transfer to Jupiter, and for the capture in the Jovian system. In particular, a fast deterministic search algorithm was developed to find the most promising set of swing-bys to reach Jupiter A second fast search algorithm was developed to find the best sequence of swing-bys of the Jovian moons. After introducing the global search algorithms and the direct transcription through Finite Elements in Time, the paper presents a number of first guess Solutions and a fully optimised transfer from the Earth to Europa.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1105.1823,
title = {Design of Low-Thrust Gravity Assist Trajectories to Europa},
author = {Massimiliano Vasile and Stefano Campagnola},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1105.1823},
year = {2011}
}