Analysis of fuel-optimal orbital transfer to geosynchronous orbit using electric propulsion

Electric propulsion has been applied to orbital transfer on account of its high specific impulse. To minimize the fuel consumption, the problem of fueloptimal orbital transfer to geosynchronous orbit is calculated and analyzed in this paper. The indirect approach is applied to the optimization of the orbital transfer to geosynchronous orbit. The calculus of variations and the Pontryagin's maximum principal are applied to the transformation from an optimal control problem to a two-point-boundary-value-problem of differential equations. The two-point-boundary-value-problem is solved by the unscented Kalman filter parameter estimation algorithm, which is of larger convergence domain and gradient- matrix free. In this paper, the influence of the initial orbit states and the J2 perturbation on the fuel consumption is analyzed through multiple numerical simulations. The results show that the optimization method is effective and the influence on the fuel consumption provide some valuable engineering guidance.