Mission Scheduling For Multiple Spacecraft Refueling Based On Space Fuel Station In Circular Orbits

As the development of space technology, the demand for space transportation system becomes larger and more various, on-orbit refueling has been a new and independent developing direction in order to reduce the launch costs, mitigate space debris and improve the payload of launch vehicle. The development of methodologies was focused to generate optimal trajectories and schedules for refueling constellations of refueling spacecraft. An on orbit reusable refueling policy and its mission scheduling for multiple spacecraft in circular through a space fuel station were presented. In order to establish the scheduling model for the on-orbit refueling of multiple circular spacecraft orbit through a space fuel station, the relationship between the velocity change and orbital elements for transferring of service spacecraft was firstly obtained based on the analysis of the problem of two impulses orbital maneuver. A multi-objective optimization model for mission scheduling of on-orbit refueling for multiple spacecraft in circular orbits was developed to optimize both the sequence and time distribution of the refueling mission, and a specifical design algorithm was employed to search the solutions to the multi-objective optimization problem. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed scheduling algorithm, a computer simulation that aims at scheduling a mission of on-orbit refueling for 30 spacecraft in circular orbits was conducted.