A fast tour design method using non-tangent v-infinity leveraging transfer

作者：Campagnola Stefano^*; Strange Nathan J; Russell Ryan P

来源：Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy, 2010, 108(2): 165-186.

DOI：10.1007/s10569-010-9295-1

• N-body
• Resonance
• Enceladus orbiter
• VILT
• Gravity assists
• Artificial satellites

The announced missions to the Saturn and Jupiter systems renewed the space community interest in simple design methods for gravity assist tours at planetary moons. A key element in such trajectories are the V-Infinity Leveraging Transfers (VILT) which link simple impulsive maneuvers with two consecutive gravity assists at the same moon. VILTs typically include a tangent impulsive maneuver close to an apse location, yielding to a desired change in the excess velocity relative to the moon. In this paper we study the VILT solution space and derive a linear approximation which greatly simplifies the computation of the transfers, and is amenable to broad global searches. Using this approximation, Tisserand graphs, and heuristic optimization procedure we introduce a fast design method for multiple-VILT tours. We use this method to design a trajectory from a highly eccentric orbit around Saturn to a 200-km science orbit at Enceladus. The trajectory is then recomputed removing the linear approximation, showing a Delta v change of < 4%. The trajectory is 2.7 years long and comprises 52 gravity assists at Titan, Rhea, Dione, Tethys, and Enceladus, and several deterministic maneuvers. Total Delta v is only 445 m/s, including the Enceladus orbit insertion, almost 10 times better then the 3.9 km/s of the Enceladus orbit insertion from the Titan-Enceladus Hohmann transfer. The new method and demonstrated results enable a new class of missions that tour and ultimately orbit small mass moons. Such missions were previously considered infeasible due to flight time and Delta v constraints.

• 出版日期2010-10