Development of a Model for the Optimization of Low-Thrust Trajectories

Abstract

In the last decades, a number of technology demonstration missions (e.g. NASA's Deep Space 1 and ESA's SMART-1 mission) have proven the technological readiness of electric propulsion (EP) for deep space applications. With this, the way for the increasing number of scientific mission proposals using EP has been paved. Particularly the low amounts of necessary fuel make EP a very attractive source of propulsion for low-cost missions to the Moon, Sun-Earth libration points or further. In this Master's thesis a trajectory optimization problem for an optimal low-thrust transfer from initial Earth-bound orbits to a chosen Moon-bound orbit is formulated, including the development of the mathematical model, implementation within Astos GESOP using the Sparse Optimization Suite (SOS) as the numerical optimizer and subsequent discussion of the results.