Construction of an upper stage flight pattern for placing a group of spacecraft into an orbit plane with the required angular distance between the satellites

Abstract

The article deals with issues of constructing the flight pattern of an upper stage and its ballistic justification subject to minimization of the mission time taking into account the upper stages performance in the case of placing a group of spacecraft into the orbit plane with provision of a uniform angular distance between the satellites, and generating a motion control program to implement the chosen flight pattern. The solution of the problem is divided into two steps: the choice of a flight pattern with its project-ballistic analysis and generation of a centre-of-mass motion control program providing the required deployment of satellites. To solve the problem of the project-ballistic analysis of the flight pattern the author developed a mathematical apparatus allowing determination of a flight pattern that matches the specified criteria of time and fuel consumption by end formulae using the linear programming technique.

Keywords

• upper stage flight pattern
• placing a group of spacecraft in orbit
• ballistic justification
• motion control program
• deployment by an argument of latitude