A Cooperative Rendezvous Strategy for Co-orbital Spacecraft

Abstract

In this paper, a new type of time-fixed cooperative rendezvous between two spacecraft in the same circular orbit is proposed and analytical solutions are obtained in consideration of two body model. The analytical solution is used as initial value in the optimization model which solves the rendezvous problem with high precision. The simulation which compares results of two body model and J 2 perturbation model shows that this new cooperative rendezvous strategy named Hohmann-Ellipse Cooperative Maneuver (HECM) has great advantage over traditional active-passive rendezvous methods. Given a fixed time, the velocity of cooperative rendezvous can decrease by 30% at most when compared with non-cooperative rendezvous.