Efficient Maneuver Placement for Automated Trajectory Design

When designing a mission, the addition of a maneuver at the right spot often improves the utility of an otherwise mediocre trajectory. However, the additional degrees of freedom of finding the best maneuver location can severely complicate automated broad-search algorithms. A computationally efficient formulation that reduces the maneuver design space to a single dimension is presented, where the efficacy of additional maneuvers along previously computed transfers is calculated explicitly via Lawden’s “primer vector”. Examples include leveraging maneuvers to ease capture at Europa, phasing maneuvers to enable resonant hopping among Saturn’s moons, and broken-plane maneuvers on transfers to Mars.