Motion Primitive Approach to Spacecraft Trajectory Design in a Multi-body System

Area of Science:

• Astrodynamics
• Robotics
• Spacecraft Trajectory Design

Background:

• Increasing spacecraft operations in cislunar and multi-body environments require faster trajectory design.
• Robotics utilizes motion primitives to build complex paths efficiently.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a framework for rapid and informed spacecraft trajectory design in multi-body gravitational systems.
• To leverage motion primitives for constructing complex spacecraft trajectories.

Main Methods:

• Generated motion primitives (periodic orbits, manifolds) via clustering to summarize phase space.
• Constructed and searched graphs of motion primitives for initial trajectory guesses.
• Computed continuous transfers using multi-objective constrained optimization and collocation.

Main Results:

• Demonstrated the framework by creating diverse transfers between Earth-Moon libration point orbits.
• Successfully generated geometrically distinct transfer trajectories using impulsive maneuvers.

Conclusions:

• The motion primitive framework enables rapid and informed trajectory design in complex gravitational environments.
• This approach is effective for generating initial guesses for spacecraft transfers, particularly between libration point orbits.