Colloquium: Juan Bas Fernandez (Space Flight)

With rising interest in halo orbit missions, reducing transfer costs between these orbits is vital. This research aims to optimize transfers by minimizing both propellant mass and flight time, offering a Pareto front of solutions rather than a single trajectory. The approach uses manifold theory, low-thrust propulsion for higher exhaust velocities, and an indirect optimal control method, combined with a heuristic optimizer based on differential evolution, to find varied trajectories that satisfy the demanding boundary conditions. The results include 100 Pareto-optimal transfers for a given use case between two Earth-Moon halo orbits, outperforming existing literature by 30%. These trajectories, verified with the ASTOS mission analysis software, are promising starting points for further optimization with direct collocation methods within the circular restricted three-body problem or a higher-fidelity one.

Supervisor: Dr.ir. E. Mooij