Multiple Interior-Point Constraints for Power-Limited Operational-Compliant Trajectories

Deep-space missions will be performed in the future by stand-alone CubeSats: for them, electric propulsion is a paramount option to enable their cost-effective space access. For limited budget reasons, these spacecraft need to follow operational compliant trajectories, alternating coasting and thrusting periods imposed at pre-defined time instants, the duty cycles. Moreover, the electrical power used varies with the heliocentric distance and drops to zero once a certain range is reached. Traditional trajectory optimization algorithms exhibit convergence problems when handling these discontinuous constraints. This work presents an optimal indirect method to compute power-limited operational compliant trajectories imposing multiple interior-point constraints, and its promising results.