Rapid Path Planning for Zero-Propellant Maneuvers

Abstract

The zero-propellant maneuver (ZPM) is an advanced space station large-angle attitude maneuver technique using control momentum gyroscopes (CMGs), and rapid path planning (RPP) enhances its performance. This paper proposes a novel trajectory optimization technique—the RPP method—to generate the ZPM path. The core of the RPP method is the reconstruction of a continuous-time feasible solution upon the rapid computation of the nonlinear programming (NLP) problem. The method maintains the sparsity of the transcribed NLP and achieves the continuous-time feasibility of the solution with a small number of discretization points. Thus, rapid acquisition of a suboptimal solution may be achieved. The performance of the RPP method is demonstrated by showing that continuous-time feasible ZPM paths with high performance index may be obtained rapidly.