Stefano Campagnola

Massimiliano Vasile, Stefano Campagnola

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.

Dario Izzo, Daniel Hennes, Marcus Märtens et al.

We consider the interplanetary trajectory design problem posed by the 8th edition of the Global Trajectory Optimization Competition and present the end-to-end strategy developed by the team ACT-ISAS (a collaboration between the European Space Agency's Advanced Concepts Team and JAXA's Institute of Space and Astronautical Science). The resulting interplanetary trajectory won 1st place in the competition, achieving a final mission value of $J=146.33$ [Mkm]. Several new algorithms were developed in this context but have an interest that go beyond the particular problem considered, thus, they are discussed in some detail. These include the Moon-targeting technique, allowing one to target a Moon encounter from a low Earth orbit; the 1-$k$ and 2-$k$ fly-by targeting techniques, enabling one to design resonant fly-bys while ensuring a targeted future formation plane% is acquired at some point after the manoeuvre ; the distributed low-thrust targeting technique, admitting one to control the spacecraft formation plane at 1,000,000 [km]; and the low-thrust optimization technique, permitting one to enforce the formation plane's orientations as path constraints.