OPTIMAL ONE AND TWO-IMPULSE MANEUVERS FOR RELATIVE SATELLITE INTERCEPTION AND RECONFIGURATION

This paper investigates impulsive maneuver planning for relative satellite motion about either elliptical or circular reference orbits. Problems to intercept an arbitrary final position or reconfigure to an arbitrary final position and velocity, while minimizing the magnitude of the velocity changes, are considered. By specifying the maneuvers to use one or two impulses, respectively, the problem can be reduced to an unconstrained optimization problem for the maneuver times, without requiring solution for the primer vector. Results show the significance of the phasing of the maneuver times relative to the final time.