The effects of parking orbit elements on designing of on-orbit servicing missions

Abstract

Nowadays on-orbit servicing operations such as satellite refuelling, debris removal and visual inspection are considered as the most important issues in the space missions. Mission planning has a key role on the designation of such missions and it is strongly dependent on the required fuel. In this study, a new approach is proposed for the designing of the on-orbit operations with considering the parking orbit elements and location of the servicing satellites. The proposed method improves the previous mission planning process of the multiple servicing satellites in the terms of the reduction in the mission fuel consumption. Furthermore, a special rendezvous maneuver is considered for meeting the servicing satellites and the targets. Also, the transfer orbits are obtained through Lambert targeting. The optimisation of the problem is carried out by particle swarm optimisation algorithm and Taguchi technique is employed for the robust design of the control parameters of the optimisation algorithm. The results reveal that the proposed approach is an efficient way in the reduction of the fuel consumption in the on-orbit servicing missions rather than the conventional methods.

Fast cooperative angular trajectory planning for multiple on-orbit service spacecraft based on the Bezier shape-based method

“…The on-orbit service (OOS) technology is mainly used for on-orbit maintenance of spacecraft, quickly solving the problems of spacecraft in space and extending the service life of spacecraft. 1,2 Since the concept of the OOS technology was put forward, 3,4 it has been applied to practical space missions for many times. For example, the damaged solar array of the Skylab was repaired by the OOS technology; many OOS technologies such as on-orbit spacecraft assembly and component replacement have also been applied in the on-orbit flight of spacecraft.…”

Motion planning of spacecraft with obstacle avoidance under low uncertainty using the improved equal-collision-probability-curve and improved linear quadratic regulator strategy

“…Specifically, autonomous proximity operations of spacecraft is a key technology for future autonomous space missions such as autonomous rendezvous, 1 assembly, maintenance, inspection and space debris removal. [2][3][4] To deal with the autonomous proximity operations problem, the accurate model and control method is demanded for the relative motion between the target spacecraft and the chaser spacecraft. 5,6 Furthermore, as the two spacecraft involved in the autonomous proximity operations process [7][8][9][10] may damage each other through a collision, the safety requirement is a critical performance of the autonomous proximity operations.…”