Non-Impulsive Trajectory Modeling for Interplanetary Cargo Missions

Hans Mark, University of Texas at Austin

Usage Details

Blue Waters will be used for computationally intensive modeling of non-impulsive spacecraft maneuvers with low thrust and long burn time. Using the MATLAB Parallel Computing Toolbox or equivalent software, the intern will run n-body solvers (via ODE solvers like Runge-Kutta, Euler) and account for fuel consumption, moments of inertia, thruster positioning, thrust centroid offsetting, and changes in center of mass in the finite engine burns at small time intervals, requiring more than one million iterations, essentially “stringing” together a large number of orbits.

Parallel supercomputing will reduce the computing time of these iterations to minutes. For interplanetary cargo missions to Mars, the efficient modeling method developed in this project will allow more accurate trajectory corrections based on data transmitted from the spacecraft traveling at high speed.