Spacecraft relative trajectory planning under terminal angle constraints via convex optimization

Relative motion trajectory planning under terminal angle constraints is the prerequisite for spacecraft to perform various space missions. Concentrating on different thrust modes and objective functions, the trajectory planning problem is modeled as a nonlinear programming problem. The nonconvex terminal angle constraints are replaced by convex pyramid constraints, and thus the nonlinear programming problem is transformed into a convex optimization problem, which is easy to be solved by convex optimization algorithm. Numerical simulation shows that compared with traditional nonlinear programming methods, the convex optimization can significantly improve computational efficiency while ensuring calculation accuracy.