Ricerc@Sapienza

Accurate orbit injection represents a crucial issue in several mission scenarios, e.g. for spacecraft orbiting the Earth or for payload release from the upper stage of an ascent vehicle. This work considers a new guidance and control architecture based on the combined use of (i) the variable-time-domain neighboring optimal guidance technique (VTD-NOG), and (ii) the constrained proportional-derivative (CPD) algorithm for attitude control.

Future human or robotic missions to the Moon will require efficient ascent path and accurate orbit injection maneuvers, because the dynamical conditions at injection affect the subsequent phases of spaceflight. This research is focused on the original combination of two techniques applied to lunar ascent modules, i.e. (i) the recently-introduced variable-time-domain neighboring optimal guidance (VTD-NOG), and (ii) a constrained proportional-derivative (CPD) attitude control algorithm.