Virtual gravity assists maneuvers in interplanetary mission design
Abstract:
It is shown that the backward in time extension of the spacecraft interplanetary launch trajectory from the point of the low orbit of the departure planet generates a trajectory structurally coinciding with the virtual gravity assist trajectory near the departure planet. The pericenters of the auxiliary beam of the flying by hyperbolas and the time of their pericenter passage in this case differ slightly from the corresponding parameters of the designed departure orbit when starting from the specified point. Thus, the search for the trajectory of an interplanetary flight can be separated from the need to take into account the boundary conditions of the launch from an intermediate low pre-launch orbit. The pre-launch orbit is refined on the results of the search for the trajectory of the interplanetary flight. A structurally uniform scheme of ballistic design of spacecraft flight paths using multiple gravitational maneuvers based on the consideration of planetary ephemerides is presented.
