Rendezvous plansIn reality, a rendezvous trajectory from a phasing orbit is usually not done as a two burn sequence. First of all, accuracy is an issue, there are often residual forces which alter the trajectory slightly, the position of the target is not known with infinite precision - so generally it makes sense to keep the option to refine the approach and plan a correction once the target is in sight (or on the radar).Another consideration is that one might like to have the intercept point during the daylight portion of the orbit. Dependent on the phasing angle, this can be an awkward constraint as the most efficient transfer trajectories from a lower orbit are of Hohmann type and take approximately half an orbit - so if the optimal ignition time for the transfer burn is already during the day, the arrival would have to be delayed by a large radial burn which makes for an inefficient transfer. Using multiple burns with suitable offsets, it is quite possible to define a step-by-step approach to the target in which the trajectory can be controlled for each segment. Of course, if we want to approach the target via a number of such waypoints, we would not actually want to come to a rest relative to the target at each of these points - we'd just use the first burn of the Lambert sequence to get to the waypoint but follow up with the suitable burn to get smoothly to the next waypoint. The instruction to do that is font face="monospace">disable auto_burn2 - when this is used, the software will only compute the second burn of the Lambert sequence but not actually apply it. Another advantage of such a rendezvous target sequence is that the plane adjustments can be deferred - remember that close to a half orbital period transfer changing the orbital plane is very inefficient? Using a sequence, this can be done at any point. Below is an example of a three point sequence which delays rendezvous quite a bit:
Of course, the fact that the solver finds a solution for the trajectory does not imply that this would be a reasonable or efficient solution. Like for a single Lambert sequence, there are many less than optimal solutions, and a sequence might lead to weird stops and jerks if the offsets and times aren't chosen to be reasonably close to an efficient Hohmann-like transfer. Ultimately, it's part of the mission planning to decide what the important constraints are - arrival time or fuel efficiency.
Some words on the fit procedureBy default, the fit procedure tries to achieve an accuracy of 10 m when targeting. When the problem is ill-posed, the fit routine can get into an iterative pattern in which it circles the optimal solution. When a Lambert fit has not converged by half the specified maximal number of iterations (50 by default), the routine tries to reduce gains to break out of the iterative pattern and at the same time widens the window in which a solution is considered acceptable. The final window after 100 iterations can be as wide as 10 km, at which point the fit tends to converge.In this situation, it usually is advisable to replace the two-burn transfer by a rendezvous sequence with a second sequence used to improve accuracy when already close to the target. Generally, if the difference in orbital radius between chaser and target is large, the phase angle changes quite quickly. This means that the window for an optimal transfer is relatively narrow, and hence any deviation from the optimal ignition time will quickly require large radial velocity components. This in turn requires long burn durations, which makes the problem yet more complicated. Another difficulty for the fit is to target a high-eccentricity orbit. In this situation, linearizing around the arrival point (as the fit routine does to improve the next iteration) is not a particularly good strategy and convergence tends to be slow. If the fit is seen to converge, albeit slowly, simply giving it more iterations might be a good idea. You can test the following situation, which is a fairly awkward targeting problem already so that a second burn is used when close to the target for good accuracy.
Back to main index Back to science Back to LEO targeting Created by Thorsten Renk 2019 - see the disclaimer, privacy statement and contact information. |