Optimal Orbital Plane Change by the Heating-Rate-Constrained Aerocruise

There are mainly two types of synergetic maneuvers for aeroassisted orbital transfer, which are called aeroglide and aerocruise. Aerocruise mode is considered as means for maximizing the plane change of a circular orbit by considering heating rate when the vehicle maneuvers from high Earth orbit to low Earth orbit. For aerocruise, the maneuver is divided into three phases: descent, cruise, and ascent. In cruise mode the vehicle flies at a constant altitude when thrust is used to cancel the drag and the heating rate is effectively restrained. The heating-rate-constrained aerocruise scheme which consists of cruise altitude, cruise velocity and angle of attack are optimized by using Sequential Quadratic Programming (SQP). The effectivity of the algorithm and existence of the optimal solution are both validated by simulation experiments. Numerical results show that the orbital change ability is closely related to the maximum allowable heating rate. The maximum plane change is obtained when the vehicle remains on the heating-rate boundary. The optimality of the aerocruise maneuver is guaranteed by considering the optimized aerocruise scheme as performance index of descent trajectory optimization.