Efficient Mission Design via EXPLORE: Employing EXPLORE for Rapid Trajectory Design and Analysis
Author(s)
Ross, Joshua
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Abstract
Designing spacecraft missions is often a difficult task of finding a needle in a
haystack due to the high number of degrees of freedom, compounded by time
constraints and computing resource limits. A typical approach is to perform a
grid search with specific constraints. The software designed to do such
searches, namely JPL’s STOUR program, was originally designed for a very
specific mission in a time with limited computing resources, forcing it to rely
on costly file read/write operations. Since its inauguration during the design
of the Galileo mission, several enhancements and spinGoff programs have been
developed for new mission design concepts. However, the core algorithms
were still designed for computers of the 1980s and 90s. A new program,
EXPLORE, was written with modern computing techniques and semiG
automated search features that previous software did not employ, allowing
broader searches to be accomplished in significantly shorter time. This paper
uses the innerGplanet flybys (without specifying details of the deep space
maneuver) of the Cassini mission as a reference trajectory and “reGdiscovers”
several CassiniGlike trajectories, analyzes their characteristics, identifies the
closest Cassini trajectory, then extends the mission to first include the
asteroid Vesta, and then the dwarf planet Ceres, after a Saturn flyby. The
elapsed time between the inexplicit design concept to obtaining several
candidate trajectories and detailed data files for higherGlevel mission design
was approximately 3 hours using a common consumer grade desktop
computer
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Date
2011-12-01
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Text
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Masters Project
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