OPTIMAL CO-ALTITUDE RENDEZVOUS WITH CONSTANT THRUST ACCELERATION.
Abstract
A family of minimum time rendezvous trajectories is presented for a pursuer and target initially in the same circular orbit but separated by the central angle beta null. The thrust acceleration of the pursuer is constrained to a constant magnitude so that the control variable is the thrust angle. With this constraint, minimum time and minimum fuel solutions are identical. Solutions are presented for two cases, the first involving a near-optimal thrust angle program generated using a set of linearized adjoint equations, and the second involving the optimal program generated with the true adjoint equations. In each case the form of the thrust angle program is developed in terms of four constants which are chosen to solve the two-point boundary value problem associated with rendezvous. These constants are determined by iteration using the Newton-Raphson method. (Author)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 01, 1966
- Accession Number
- AD0635245
Entities
People
- Paul G. Kaminski
Organizations
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology