Decomposition technique and optimal trajectories for the aeroassisted flight experiment (Q757825)

The aeroassisted flight experiment (AFE) refers to a spacecraft to be launched and then recovered by the space shuttle in 1994. It simulates a transfer from a geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO) to a low Earth orbit (LEO). Specifically, the AFE spacecraft is released from the space shuttle and is accelerated by means of a solid rocket motor toward Earth, so as to achieve atmospheric entry conditions close to those of a spacecraft returning from GEO. Following the atmospheric pass, the AFE spacecraft ascends to the specified LEO via an intermediate parking Earth orbit (PEO). The final maneuver includes the rendezvous with and the capture by the space shuttle. The entry and exit orbital planes of the AFE spacecraft are identical with the orbital plane of the space shuttle. In this paper, with reference to the AFE spacecraft, an actual GEO-to-LEO transfer is considered and optimal trajectories are determined by minimizing the total characteristic velocity. The optimization is performed with respect to the time history of the controls (angle of attack and angle of bank), the entry path inclination and the flight time being free. Two transfer maneuvers are considered: (DA) direct ascent to LEO; (IA) indirect ascent to LEO via PEO. While the motion of the AFE spacecraft in a 3D-space is described by a system of six ODEs, substantial simplifications are possible if one exploits these facts: (i) the instantaneous orbital plane is nearly identical with the initial orbital plane; (ii) the bank angle is small; and (iii) the Earth's angular velocity is relatively small. Under these assumptions, the complete system can be decoupled into two subsystems, one describing the longitudinal motion and one describing the lateral motion. The angle of attack history, the entry path inclination, and the flight time are determined via the longitudinal motion subsystem; in this subsystem, the total characteristic velocity is minimized subject to the specified LEO requirement. The angle of bank history is determined via the lateral motion subsystem; in this subsystem, the difference between the instantaneous bank angle and a constant bank angle is minimized in the least square sense subject to the specified orbital inclination requirement. It is shown that both the angle of attack and the angle of bank are constant. This result has considerable importance in the design of nominal trajectories to be used in the guidance of AFE and AOT vehicles.