Particle Swarm Optimization Applied to Orbital Three-Player Conflict

An orbital three-player conflict with impulsive thrust is studied in this work. Due to the absence of maneuver capabilities of the target spacecraft, a defender spacecraft is engaged to eliminate the threat of the attacker spacecraft to the target spacecraft. The orbital three-player conflict is divided into two layers. In the internal layer, the attacker spacecraft tries to intercept the target spacecraft, which is called orbital interception. In the external layer, the defender spacecraft tries to intercept the attacker spacecraft to protect the target spacecraft, which is called orbital anti-interception. Based on the natural cubic spline interpolation, a new algorithm for solving the Lambert problem is present to model the behavior of both the orbital interception and the orbital anti-interception. The particle swarm optimization algorithm is employed to find the optimal anti-intercept orbit. Numerical simulations illustrate the effectiveness of the anti-intercept strategy.