Automated Tour Design in the Saturnian System

TL;DR

This paper introduces a grid-based dynamic programming algorithm for optimizing multi-moon tours in the Saturnian system, enabling efficient exploration of complex resonance-based trajectories for future missions.

Contribution

It presents a novel multi-objective optimization method that leverages a database of transfers to efficiently find globally optimal moon tour trajectories.

Findings

Unveiled a complete trade space of moon tour designs to Enceladus.

Achieved significant reduction in computation time for trajectory optimization.

Demonstrated the effectiveness of resonance family hopping in mission planning.

Abstract

Future missions to Enceladus would benefit from multi-moon tours that leverage V-infinity on resonant orbits to progressively transfer between moons. Such "resonance family hopping" trajectories present a vast search space for global optimization due to the different combinations of available resonances and flyby speeds. The proposed multi-objective tour design algorithm optimizes entire moon tours from Titan to Enceladus via grid-based dynamic programming, in which the computation time is significantly reduced by utilizing a database of V-infinity-leveraging transfers. The result unveils a complete trade space of the moon tour design to Enceladus in a tractable computation time and global optimality.