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Low-thrust Lambert transfer based on two-stage constant-vector thrust control method

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A Correction to this article was published on 07 July 2022

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Abstract

The low-thrust Lambert transfer refers to that the spacecraft achieves the orbital transfer whose boundary conditions are represented by two sets of orbital elements at initial and final time by the low-thrust propulsion system. The modulus and direction of the low-thrust solutions in previous methods change with time, which leads to high control requirements for the engine. In this paper, to reduce the requirements of the engine, a practical two-stage constant-vector thrust control method is proposed, in which the magnitude and direction of the thrust are deemed as segmental constant value in TNH frame, where three components of the thrust are ft, fn, and fh. First, the mathematical model of the two-stage constant-vector thrust is formulated, and a rapid algorithm is presented to obtain the solution based on the linearized sensitivity matrix, which describes the relationship between the constant-vector thrust and the change of the orbital elements approximately. Furthermore, two low-thrust Lambert strategies based on the two-stage constant-vector thrust are presented for cases of short-time transfer and long-time transfer. A sequence of numerical simulations demonstrated the efficiency of the proposed approaches. The proposed control strategies are solved rapidly, and they are also suitable for different types of orbits with J2 perturbation, which are practical options for engineering applications.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 11902012) and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. YWF-21-BJ-J-805). We thank LetPub (www.letpub.com) for its linguistic assistance during the preparation of this manuscript.

Funding

National natural science foundation of china, No. 11902012, Xiucong Sun, fundamental research funds for the central universities, No. YWF-21-BJ-J-805, Xiucong Sun.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Astronautics, Beihang University, Beijing, 100191, People’s Republic of China

    Xiucong Sun

  2. The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Hong Kong

    Shengzhou Bai

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  1. Xiucong Sun
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  2. Shengzhou Bai
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Correspondence to Shengzhou Bai.

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Sun, X., Bai, S. Low-thrust Lambert transfer based on two-stage constant-vector thrust control method. Nonlinear Dyn 110, 313–346 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11071-022-07608-y

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