AE202 Homework 5

Brishen Hawkins February 24, 2012 Consider a mission to go to Uranus. Assume, for now, that the planets dont actually exist, and that we just have a satellite near Earths orbit around the Sun and want to go to an orbit near Uranus orbit around the sun. Assume both such orbits are circular. Consider three possible mission plans: a. Direct Hohmann Transfer b. Bi-Elliptic Transfer, with intermediate radius (R2 in the gure below) near Pluto (40AU). This transfer is a simple half ellipse from R1 to R2 , a small burn at R2 to increase the perihelion to the desired target orbit, following this half ellipse from R2 to R3 , and nally a retro-burn at R3 to circularize the nal orbit. c. A quick transfer. Begin in the same transfer orbit from 1 to 2, but jump o at point 4 directly onto the nal circular orbit.

Constants

Mass of the Sun = 1.9891 1030 kg Radius of Earths orbit (R1 ) = 1 AU 1.496 1011 m Radius of Uranuss orbit (R4 ) = 19.208 AU 2.873 1012 m Transfer radius = 40AU (R2 ) 5.984 1012 m 2 2 = GM (6.67 1011 Nm )(1.9891 1030 kg) 1.327 1020 Nm 2 kg kg

2
2.1

Formulae
Hohmann Transfer
R1 +R4 2

semi-major axis of transfer ellipse at = velocity of orbit 1 v1 = velocity of orbit 4 v4 =

R1 R4

velocity of transfer orbit vt1 = velocity of nal orbit vt4 =

2 ( R1 1 ) at

1 ) at

2 ( R4

velocity change of rst burn v1 = vt1 v1 velocity change of second burn v2 = v4 vt4

total velocity change v = v1 + v2 time to transfer between orbits t =

(R1 +R4 )3 8

2.2

Bi-Elliptical Transfer
R1 +R2 2 R2 +R4 2

semi-major axis of transfer orbit 1 at1 = semi-major axis of transfer orbit 2 at2 = velocity at point 2 v2 = velocity at point 3 v3 =
2 ( R2 2 ( R4 1 ) at1 1 ) at2

velocity at point 1 for rst transfer ellipse vt1 = velocity at point 3 for orbit 4 vt3 =
R4

2 ( R1

1 ) at1 1 ) at2

velocity at point 2 for second transfer ellipse vt2 =

2 ( R4

change in velocity at point 1 v1 = vt1 v1 change in velocity at point 2 v2 = vt2 v2 change in velocity at point 3 v3 = vt3 v4 total velocity change v = v1 + v2 + v3 time to transfer between orbits t = 2.3 One-Tangent
at1
1e2

a3 t1

a3 t2

eccentricity of transfer ellipse e = 1 true anomaly = cos1 ( R4 1 ) e esin() ight path angle = tan1 ( 1+ecos() ) velocity at point 4 v4 =
2 ( R4 1 at1

R1 at1

change in velocity at point 4 v4 =

2 2 v4 + vt3 2v4 vt3 cos()

eccentric anomaly E = 2tan1 1e tan( ) 1+e 2 total velocity change v = v1 + v4 time to transfer between orbits t = (E esin(E))
a3 t1

Calculations

After substitution into the equations, the equations yielded the following values. These were computed using a MATLAB script written by me.

3.1

Hohmann

v = 15, 937 m/s t = 5.0687108 s 3.2 Bi-Elliptic

v = 15, 675 m/s t= 4.0069109 s 3.3 One-Tangent

v = 19, 932 m/s t = 2.5895108 s 3.4 Graphs

Red = Hohmann Transfer Blue = Bi-Elliptic Transfer Green = One-Tangent Transfer