Carrying out low-thrust transfers of spacecrafts in the near-earth space from intermediate elliptic to the geostationary orbit using electric rocket engines seems to be one of the most important tasks of modern cosmonautics. Electric rocket engines, whose specific impulse of the reactive jet is an order of magnitude more than in chemical RD, are preferable for interorbit flights with a maximum payload in the case when a significant increase in the duration of the maneuver is permissible. Ability to throttling the rocket engine thrust is traditionally considered as one of the ways to reduce both the engine mass and the required fuel assumptions for performing the specified maneuver. Using the concept of an ideal-rocket engine provides the upper estimates of the payload mass of interborbital flights for the given power level. Accounting for the properties of real engines leads to the need of considering the mathematical models with more strict limits on control functions. A study of the efficiency of three modes of thrust control of an electric propulsion rocket engine was carried out when performing practically interesting spacecraft flights from highly elliptical intermediate near-earth orbits to geostationary orbits. A mathematical model of constant power relay rocket engine has been built. The formulation of the variational problem of the Maer type is given about the execution of a given dynamic maneuver for the throttled and unregulated electric rocket engines of constant power. Using the Pontryagin maximum principle, an analysis of the optimal control functions was carried out, for which the final relations were written out, which allowed to write down the system of differential equations of the optimal movement of the spacecraft, equipped with relay electric rocket engine. The obtained numerical and quality results of the study of the effectiveness of various modes of thrust control of an electric propulsion engine to increase the payload of a given orbital maneuver confirmed the correctness of mathematical models of throttled and relay engines and, in general, the efficiency of using solutions of the averaged equations of optimal motion of a spacecraft for numerical solution of the corresponding boundary value problems in an exact formulation.
Low-Thrust Control Strategies for Earth-to-Mars Trajectories
