Initial Trajectory Design of the Electric Sail Escaping from Solar System Based on the Bezier Curve Method

Abstract

The detection of the solar system boundary has gradually attracted people's attention. To explore the solar system boundary，we need to find an efficient propulsion system and design a reasonable trajectory to escape from the solar system. Therefore，this paper proposes to use the Bezier shape-based method to quickly generate the three-dimensional trajectory of the electric sail escaping from the solar system，which provides an appropriate initial solution for a more accurate trajectory optimization algorithm. By taking the results obtained by the Bezier shape-based method as the initial solution of Gauss pseudospectral method（GPM），the applicability of the results obtained by the Bezier shape-based method to the initial solution of the direct solver is evaluated. The simulation results show that the Bezier shape-based method can design a reasonable three-dimensional initial trajectory of the electric sail escaping from the solar system for the direct optimization solver in a short time. This is of great significance for the rapid evaluation of a large number of electric sail flight scenarios in the preliminary mission design stage.

Keywords

low-thrust trajectory design / escape from the solar system / Bezier shape-based method / preliminary mission analysis