Sequential low-thrust orbit-raising of all-electric satellites

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Authors
Chadalavada, Pardhasai
Farabi, Tanzimul Hasan
Dutta, Atri
Advisors
Issue Date
2020-06-04
Type
Article
Keywords
All-electric satellites , Artificial neural network , Electric orbit-raising , Low-thrust trajectory optimization , Multi-revolution orbit transfer , Solar array degradation
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Citation
Chadalavada, Pardhasai; Farabi, Tanzimul; Dutta, Atri. 2020. "Sequential Low-Thrust Orbit-Raising of All-Electric Satellites." Aerospace 7, no. 6: 74
Abstract

In this paper, we consider a recently developed formulation of the electric orbit-raising problem that utilizes a novel dynamic model and a sequence of optimal control sub-problems to yield fast and robust computations of low-thrust trajectories. This paper proposes two enhancements of the computational framework. First, we use thruster efficiency in order to determine the trajectory segments over which the spacecraft coasts. Second, we propose the use of a neural network to compute the solar array degradation in the Van Allen radiation belts. The neural network is trained on AP-9 data and SPENVIS in order to compute the associated power loss. The proposed methodology is demonstrated by considering transfers from different geosynchronous transfer orbits. Numerical simulations analyzing the effect of thruster efficiency and average power degradation indicate the suitability of starting the maneuver from super-geosynchronous transfer orbits in order to limit fuel expenditure and radiation damage. Furthermore, numerical simulations demonstrate that proposed enhancements are achieved with only marginal increase in computational runtime, thereby still facilitating rapid exploration of all-electric mission scenarios.

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Description
© 2020 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Publisher
MDPI Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
Journal
Book Title
Series
Aerospace;v.7:no.6:art.no.74
PubMed ID
DOI
ISSN
2226-4310
EISSN