SHAPING VELOCITY COORDINATES FOR GENERATING LOW-THRUST TRAJECTORIES

This paper investigates application of shape-based methods to spacecraft trajectory optimization. Low-thrust trajectories are represented by the evolution of the velocity coordinates in spherical coordinates and are characterized in terms of an overall required velocity increment Delta V. The defined performance index requires the evaluation of an integral that must be evaluated numerically. This work applies a standard Gauss quadrature scheme shows it is accurate to within 0.1% of the true index value and substantially faster than trapezoidal integration. The proposed improvements are applied to generate Delta V contours similar to porkchop plots conventionally defined for impulsive maneuvers.