Chinese Space Science and Technology

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Lambert's Problem in Spacecraft Rendezvous

Zhu Renzhang~1 Meng Wei~2 Hu Xiting(1 Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics,Beijing 100083)(2 China Academy of Space Technology,Beijing 100094)   

  • Online:2006-12-25

Abstract: Lambert's problem is studied for spacecraft rendezvous.Main geometrical properties of transfer orbit are interpreted.The Lagrange equation for transfer time was used to analyze the relationship between the transfer-time and orbital parameters.A graph method was presented to find the optimal transfer revolution;and the minimum-Δv,fixed-time,two-impulse rendezvous(between) two spacecraft orbiting along two coplanar unidirectional circular orbits were studied.For a given rendezvous time and an initial separation angle,optimal initial and termingal coasting periods can be found via a comparing-one-by-one method to obtain the globally minimum-Δv.