Fast Trajectory Generation and Asteroid Sequence Selection in Multispacecraft for Multiasteroid Exploration

As an increasing number of asteroids are being discovered, detecting them using limited propulsion resources and time has become an urgent problem in the aerospace field. However, there is no universal fast asteroid sequence selection method that finds the trajectories for multiple low-thrust spacecraft for detecting a large number of asteroids. Furthermore, the calculation efficiency of the traditional trajectory optimization method is low, and it requires a large number of iterations. Therefore, this study combines Monte Carlo tree search (MCTS) with spacecraft trajectory optimization. A fast MCTS pruning algorithm is proposed, which can quickly complete asteroid sequence selection and trajectory generation for multispacecraft exploration of multiple asteroids. By combining the Bezier shape-based (SB) method and MCTS, this study realizes the fast search of the exploration sequence and the efficient optimization of the continuous transfer trajectories. In the simulation example, compared with the traversal algorithm, the MCTS pruning algorithm obtained the global optimal detection sequence of the search tree in a very short time. Under the same conditions, the Bezier SB method obtained the transfer trajectory with a better performance index faster than the finite Fourier series SB method. Performances of the proposed method are illustrated through a complex asteroid multiflyby mission design.