Optimal Scheduling For On-orbit Refueling Based On Space Fuel Station

On-orbit refueling has been a new and independent developing direction in the field of space technique with the aim of reducing the launch costs,easing the amount of space debris and improving the payload of launch vehicle,for the reason that the space transportation system has become larger and more complicated in recent years.Therefore,the assumption of propellant depot has also been proposed.Furthermore,on-orbit refueling technology is increasingly mature,on-orbit refueling technology has receive more and more attention by many country.Reach on on-orbit refueling mission scheduling based on propellant depot has great significance in future study.In recent years,a novel transportation system based on fuel stations(or propellent depots),orbital transfer vehicles as an integrated transportation infrastructure for Earth orbital,lunar and interplanetary missions was proposed.On-orbit refueling based on propellant depots has been increasingly emphasized as one of the most important technologies in development of On-orbit servicing for a nation.In this paper,a new space exploration concept supported by space fuel stations or propellant depots is proposed,where the space exploration missions which can be supported by stations are given based on the benefit and prospect analysis of the station.The space transportation system infrastructures for exploration missions,such as the LEO mission,GEO mission,human lunar mission,asteroid mission and Mars mission are given.Study on the optimization of on-orbit refueling mission and task scheduling based on propellant depot.The development of methodologies to generate optimal trajectories and schedules for refueling constellations of refueling-capable satellites is presented in this paper.An onorbit reusable refueling policy and its mission scheduling for multiple geosynchronous satellites through a propellant depot is presented.In order to establish the scheduling model for the on-orbit refueling of multiple circular satellites through a propellant depot,the relationship between the velocity change and the maneuver time for orbital transferring of service spacecraft is first obtained based on the analysis of the problem of two impulses orbital maneuver.A multi-objective optimization model for mission scheduling of on-orbit refueling for multiple cirlular satellites is developed to optimize both the job sequence and job time distribution of the refueling mission.The space exploration missions which can be supported by propellant depot are given based on the benefit of reusable servicing spacecraft and prospect analysis of fuel limitation,and a specifically design genetic algorithm is employed to search the solutions to this multi-objective optimization problem.Finally,a computer simulation that aims at scheduling a mission of on-orbit refueling for 40 circular satellites is conducted on the MATLAB/STK.The simulation results show that the proposed scheme is feasible.In addition,a preliminary depot configuration is discussed.This study can be a reference for the future deep research on propellant depot.