LOW-ENERGY LOW-THRUST ORBIT DESIGN AND OPTIMIZATION IN MULTI-BODY GRAVITATIONAL FIELD

The design and optimization methods for low-energy low-thrust transfer orbit in multi-body gravitational field have been studied in this paper. The methods have been applied to the example of the transfer orbit between the parking orbits around Jovian moons. The "Halo-like Section" has been proposed, and the manifolds were simply parameterized and patched by the multi-body Lambert algorithm based on collocation method. Then using the global optimization algorithm, the deferential evolution (DE) method, a preliminary optimization result is obtained with minimum fuel consumption. The low-thrust transfer orbits are designed and optimized by the homotopic method in multi-body gravitational field and the multi-circle transfer orbit design method with fixed perigee height. The results show that the low-energy low-thrust transfer orbit with minimum fuel consumption could be effectively computed by the proposed methods. The methods could also be applied to the design and optimization of the low-energy low-thrust transfer orbit between other celestial bodies.