End-to-End Mission Design & Trajectory Optimization

Need: A need exists for a generalized, robust, user-friendly and accessible end-to-end mission design optimization tool.

Solution: Our solution to developing this capability was to interface two JSC tools—Copernicus and Genesis. Each of these tools has a specific area of the mission design process that it excels at. By utilizing them both, we can gain performance benefits not seen by either on their own.
- Copernicus is a trajectory design and optimization software used for in-space trajectories around multiple bodies.
- Genesis is a flight mechanics tool used to model ascent, entry, descent, and landing trajectories around a single planetary body.

Year 1 was focused on combining these 2 software packages—allowing Copernicus to incorporate the ascent/descent capabilities of Genesis into the optimization problem—and developing this end-to-end mission design capability.

Year 2 we focused on increasing the robustness of this capability by building the initial guess generator (IGG), which produces initial guesses based on simplifying assumptions and the physics of the problem.

Year 3 of our project focused on utilizing the end-to-end mission design and optimization capabilities developed in the previous 2 years to analyze specific mission scenarios—scaling up from proof of concept to real analyses—capturing any resulting performance benefits, as well as addressing the Big Data challenges we’re faced with—namely, how we’re going to manage and interpret all the data that’s generated.