In the context of future human space exploration missions in the solar system (with an horizon of 2025) and according to the roadmap proposed by ISECG (International Space Exploration Coordination Group) [1], a new step could be to maintain as an outpost, at one of the libration points of the Earth-Moon system, a space station. This would ease access to far destinations as Moon, Mars and asteroids and would allow testing some innovative technologies, before employing them for far distant human missions. One of the main challenges will be to maintain permanently, and ensure on board crew health thanks to an autonomous space medical center docked to the proposed space station, as a Space haven. Then the main problem to solve is to manage the station servitude, during deployment (modules integration) and operational phase. Challenges lie, on a global point of view, in the design of the operational scenarios and, on a local point of view, in trajectories selection, so as to minimize velocity increments (energy consumption) and transportation duration (crew safety). Which recommendations could be found out as far as trajectories optimization is concerned, that would fulfill energy consumption, transportation duration and safety criterion? What would technological hurdles be to rise for the building of such Space haven? What would be performances to aim at for critical sub-systems? Expected results of this study could point out research and development perspectives for human spaceflight missions and above all, in transportation field for long lasting missions.
Thus, the thesis project, presented here, aims starting from global system life-cycle decomposition, to identify by phase operational scenario and optimize resupply vehicle mission.
The main steps of this project consist of:
- Bibliographical survey, that covers all involved disciplines like mission analysis (Astrodynamics, Orbital mechanics, Orbitography, N-Body Problem, Rendezvous…), Applied Mathematics, Optimization, Systems Engineering….
- Entire system life-cycle analysis, so as to establish the entire set of scenarios for deployment and operations (nominal cases, degraded cases, contingencies…) and for all trajectories legs (Low Earth Orbit, Transfer, Rendezvous, re-entry…)
- Trade-off analysis for Space Station architecture
- Modeling of the mission legs trajectories
- Trajectories optimization
Three main scenarios have been selected from the results of the preliminary design of the Space Station, named THOR: the Space Station deployment, the resupply cargo missions and the crew transportation. The deep analysis of those three main steps pointed out the criticality of the rendezvous strategies in the vicinity of Lagrangian points. A special effort has been set on those approach maneuvers. The optimization of those rendezvous trajectories led to consolidate performances (in term of energy and duration) of the global transfer from the Earth to the Lagrangian point neighborhood and return. Finally, recommendations have been deduced that support the Lagrangian points importance for next steps of Human Spaceflight exploration of the Solar system.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:univ-toulouse.fr/oai:oatao.univ-toulouse.fr:17746 |
| Date | 15 December 2015 |
| Creators | Lizy-Destrez, Stéphanie |
| Contributors | Institut Supérieur de l'Aéronautique et de l'Espace - ISAE-SUPAERO (FRANCE), Universität Stuttgart (GERMANY), Département Conception et conduite des véhicules Aéronautiques et Spatiaux - DCAS (Toulouse, France) |
| Source Sets | Université de Toulouse |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | PhD Thesis, PeerReviewed, info:eu-repo/semantics/doctoralThesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | http://oatao.univ-toulouse.fr/17746/ |
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