Conveners
Low Thrust #3
- Juan Carlos Bastante (OHB System AG)
- Christina Jetzschmann (Airbus DS Bremen)
- Lale Evrim Briese (German Aerospace Center (DLR))
Preliminary design of artificial satellite missions commonly relays on the use of simplified models that comprise the bulk of the dynamics. In the case of the gravitational potential, the amplitude of long-term oscillations of the orbital parameters is roughly one order of magnitude larger than the short-period oscillations. Because of that, dealing with just the few more relevant zonal...
Commercial and scientific satellites located in Geostationary Equatorial Orbit (GEO) that are not placed there by the launch vehicle are often injected in a parking orbit. They are transferred therefrom to GEO using their own on-board propulsion system. The classical strategy relies either on Chemical Propulsion (CP) or Electrical Propulsion (EP). The former guarantees very short transfer...
Low-thrust propulsion and gravity assists maneuvers are both well known to provide sig- nificant benefits in terms of required propellant mass for interplanetary trajectories. However, the propellant reduction achieved with low-thrust engines, when compared to their chemical counterparts, comes at the cost of a higher transfer time.
Therefore, the design and optimization of interplanetary...
Bi-lateral discussions between NASA and the European
Space Agency identified the orbiter element as a promising
European-led contribution to a future international Mars Sample
Return campaign. Airbus recently completed the Mars
Sample Return Architecture Assessment Study on behalf of
ESA, with the objective to identify and quantify candidate
mission architectures. The paper describes the...
Modern space missions often require a large velocity increment, which leads to the need to use main electric propulsion systems with a high value of the specific impulse to reduce the mass of the active propellant and increase the mass of spacecraft in target orbits.
To improve the efficiency of space transportation operations, optimization of the low-thrust trajectories is required....
