Advancing Spacecraft Trajectory Design, Analysis, and Prediction within Multi-Body Systems 

Abstract:

Our future in space involves miniaturized satellites for low-cost and rapid access to space, autonomously navigating spacecraft, on-orbit servicing for sustainability, in-space assembly of critical infrastructure, formations for multi-point measurements, and spacecraft visiting the farthest reaches of our solar system. Across this wide array of architectures, form factors, and destinations is a common thread: spacecraft operating within multi-body gravitational systems. These systems possess a chaotic solution space that has challenged several astrodynamics tasks, including 1) sufficiently understanding the broad array of possible motions for a spacecraft; 2) designing complex and constrained trajectories that exist across a diverse trade space; 3) generating digestible predictions of the possible future motions of an object; and 4) automating all these tasks to reduce operational costs and support autonomous decision-making. This talk will present selected recent contributions from my research group to address these challenges by developing new trajectory analysis, design, and prediction strategies for spacecraft operating in multi-body systems such as cislunar space.