The project is a simulation of an earth to moon orbit with free return. The software tries to optimize the orbit to have the ∆V as low as possible while avoiding any corrective ∆V later on in the orbit.
The software also renders a 2D animation of the spacecraft flying the orbit, and exports all the useful orbit parameters to an Excel for later consults.
May 16, 2018
Researcher
Developer
The code has been completely developed with MatLab. The orbit is propagated with Kepler, with a ∆t of 20 minutes that is reduces to 60 seconds. nearby the moon for a more accurate simulation. The software cycles throught many values of three different parameters:
α: the angle at which the spacecraft enters the sphere of influence of the moon
β: the burn out angle of the spacecraft
T: duration of the orbit
The software checks for possible impacts on the moon surfaces and discards the results, while it saves in an Excel sheet the all the results of the orbits that can come back safe to earth. After all the iteration are completed, the result with the lowest ∆V is selected and shown. Having the Excel sheet is useful to select a more appropriate orbit for the needs. For example, the lowest ∆V produces an orbit with a perigee at 550km from the surface of the moon. This is too high if the mission needs to land on the moon, so an orbit with a lower perigee (around 100km) can be choosen instead, even if the burn out needs to be longer.
Previous work
