Author

Barry R. Witt

Date of Award

3-9-2009

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Astronautical Engineering

Department

Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics

First Advisor

William E. Wiesel, PhD

Abstract

Given an initial orbit and a set of other orbits of interest, the lowest change in velocity "path" between them is of high value. Software was developed to visualize the change in velocity required from a user defined window of burn to a user defined window of intercept. The time between burn and intercept is unrestricted. Multiple intercepts require searching an n! solution space, research then is focused on ways to pick optimal choices without fully calculating out the cost of doing all possible combinations. Some code was translated from BASIC and the rest was newly developed in MATLAB. The code was validated using orbits with known intercept solutions.

AFIT Designator

AFIT-GA-ENY-09-M10

DTIC Accession Number

ADA496780

Included in

Astrodynamics Commons

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