Convex optimization of asteroid landing trajectories driven by solar radiation pressure
Chuan-Jun Dong, Hongwei Yang, Shuang Li, Bo Li
Abstract
High-area/mass ratio landers driven by Solar Radiation Pressure (SRP) have potential applications for future asteroid landing missions. This paper develops a new convex optimization-based method for planning trajectories driven by SRP. A Minimum Landing Error (MLE) control problem is formulated to enable planning SRP-controlled trajectories with different flight times. It is transformed into Second Order Cone Programming (SOCP) successfully by a series of different convexification technologies. A trust region constraint and a modified MLE objective function are used to guarantee the convergence performance of the optimization algorithm. Thereafter, the SRP-driven trajectory optimal control problem is converted equivalently into a sequence of convex optimal control problems that can be solved effectively. A set of numerical simulation results has verified the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed optimization method.