Optimal low thrust spacecraft maneuvers for station keeping

This paper studies orbital maneuvers for a spacecraft that has the goal of performing station keeping in its orbit. This type of maneuver is necessary in order to compensate the effects of perturbations in the orbit of a spacecraft that needs to stay in a specific orbit to be able to perform its mission. It will use a low thrust to achieve this task. To do this, it is also important to find solutions that minimize the fuel consumption, since fuel will also be required for other tasks of the mission. To solve this problem, the present research uses a hybrid optimal control approach to numerically approach the problem, where the question of the accuracy of the satisfaction of the constraints is considered. The spacecraft is assumed to have its motion controlled by the gravity field of the Earth and the forces delivered by the thrusts. These thrusts have fixed magnitude and operates in an on-off mode. Numerical results are presented.

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