Date of Award

3-2022

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics

First Advisor

Bruce A. Cox, PhD

Abstract

Orbits around Earth are becoming increasingly congested and contested, posing potential future threats to space assets. Cislunar space may offer an effective solution to these problems by offering storage for servicing and replacement vehicles. This investigation explores how to minimize the dV costs required of a network of service vehicles traveling from cislunar space to GEO using in-situ resource utilization. In this investigation the arc costs of an event-driven generalized multicommodity network flow are generated for creation of a model to be used to develop a dynamic scheduler. High-thrust trajectories between various inclinations of GEO, an Earth-Moon L1 Lyapunov orbit (L1), and a distant prograde orbit (DPO) are used. The effect of orbit radius on minimizing dV of inclination changes in GEO is also investigated to determine arc costs for multiple deliveries within GEO. It was found that there is little variation in time-of-flight in trajectories leaving L1, but significant variation in dV costs. DPO trajectories also appear to offer significant dV savings in comparison to L1 trajectories. In GEO, dV costs of inclination changes are minimized either at GEO radius (42,164 km) or at a multiple of 1.25xGEO radius (52,75 km).

AFIT Designator

AFIT-ENY-MS-22-M-315

DTIC Accession Number

AD1175632

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