Fast low earth orbit acquisition plan optimiser

This paper describes a tool and the associated mathematical framework that computes an orbit acquisition plan that either minimizes the duration of the orbit acquisition phase or the required Delta-V given the spacecraft characteristics and mission constraints. The automatic algorithms are built upon on a perturbation analysis of the nominal orbit and provide the necessary information to perform preliminary analysis of orbit acquisition phases of Earth observation satellites. Two different strategies are exploited, one based on continuous rate semi-major axis changes and a second based on step-wise semi-major axis changes. The former is suitable for the case when several small manoeuvres can be approximated by a single manoeuvre with a constant altitude change rate and during the early design phases when detailed information about the manoeuvring constrains is not available. The latter produces a more detailed plan that considers the existence of a first and a last manoeuvres with smaller amplitude than the remaining ones. All algorithms take into account Delta-V limits and the existence of periods when manoeuvring is not possible.