Multiple Gravity Assist Spacecraft Trajectories Design Based on BFS and EP-DE Algorithm

Abstract

The paper deals with the multiple gravity assist trajectories design. In order to improve the performance of the heuristic algorithms, such as differential evolution algorithm, in multiple gravity assist trajectories design optimization, a method combining BFS (breadth-first search) and EP-DE (differential evolution algorithm based on search space exploring and principal component analysis) is proposed. In this method, firstly find the possible multiple gravity assist planet sequences with pruning based BFS and use standard differential evolution algorithm to judge the possibility of all the possible trajectories. Then select the better ones from all the possible solutions. Finally, use EP-DE which will be introduced in this paper to find an optimal decision vector of spacecraft transfer time schedule (launch window and transfer duration) for each selected planet sequence. In this paper, several cases are presented to prove the efficiency of the method proposed.