Stochastic optimal maneuver strategies for transfer trajectories

After being initially launched into the parking orbit, a spacecraft usually implements several maneuvers to insert its nominal orbit as the geostationary orbit for global communication, a Halo orbit to survey the solar wind, and an adjacent orbit to rendezvous with other spacecraft. The transfer problem between two different trajectories is very important in academic research and practical engineering. Trajectory correction maneuvers are necessary to keep actual flight trajectories near the nominal ones because of the errors produced by control maneuvers, measurements, launching, and modeling. However, an inappropriate strategy costs more time and fuel and may even result in mission failure. This study investigates optimal maneuver strategies from the stochastic control viewpoint to track interesting and typical trajectories, including the Halo-transfer and Lambert rendezvous orbits. This study proposes an improved correction algorithm to eliminate modeling errors for reference transfer trajectories. Moreover, this study develops an innovative approach to obtain the optimal correction maneuver strategy that uses the stochastic control theory in determining corrections and adopts the genetic-algorithm and Monte Carlo joint simulation to yield the schedules of maneuvers. Finally, numerical simulations indicate that the proposed approach has potential applications in the tracking of reference trajectories in closed-loop correction maneuvers.