Design of Initial Guess Low Thrust Trajectories Using Clohessy-Wiltshire Equations

Abstract: The commercial interest in producing low-cost space missions by exploiting the superior propellant management of low-thrust propulsion technology has become increasingly popular. Typical to such missions is the design of transfer trajectories between desired targets. This is a complex and computationally expensive process. Additionally, the optimal solvers used to generate these trajectories are extremely sensitive to initial guesses. One way to overcome this challenge is to use a reasonably approximate trajectory as an initial guess on optimal solvers. This paper presents a flexible approach to generating very low thrust trajectories. The initial guess is obtained from a flexible semi-analytic approach that can provide both planar and three-dimensional initial guess trajectories for various design scenarios like orbit raising, orbit insertion, phasing, and rendezvous. NASA's Evolutionary Mission Trajectory Generator (EMTG) and General Mission Analysis Tool (GMAT) are used as optimal solvers in this analysis. Numerical case studies are presented in this paper.