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1000<br />

900<br />

Final Mass (kg)<br />

800<br />

700<br />

600<br />

500<br />

400<br />

300<br />

200<br />

100<br />

Ballistic x 1.25<br />

Low-Thrust<br />

0<br />

0 100 200 300 400 500 600<br />

Asteroid Sequence #<br />

Figure 33: Comparison of mass-optimal low-thrust <strong>and</strong> two-impulse solutions <strong>for</strong> all Earth –<br />

Asteroid 1 – Asteroid 2 – Asteroid 3 sequences.<br />

The figures above indicate that as calculated, the two-impulse solutions do not<br />

provide a reliable upper bound. However, if the two-impulse solutions are shifted<br />

slightly, then they could provide an upper bound <strong>for</strong> the low-thrust solutions. For the<br />

sample problem, this would require a multiplication factor of 1.09, 1.14, <strong>and</strong> 1.21 <strong>for</strong> Leg<br />

1, Leg 1 + Leg 2, <strong>and</strong> Leg 1 + Leg 2 + Leg 3, respectively. Of course, on a larger<br />

problem, this multiplication factor is not known a priori. Choosing a value of this<br />

parameter that is too small will result in a number of good sequences being pruned out<br />

during the branch-<strong>and</strong>-bound procedure. Choosing a value that is too large, however,<br />

will result in an unnecessarily large number of low-thrust trajectory <strong>optimization</strong>s to be<br />

carried out because very few asteroid sequences will be pruned. The solution is to iterate<br />

on the best value of this multiplication factor during the branch-<strong>and</strong>-bound procedure, as<br />

will be illustrated on the sample problem.<br />

Another important aspect of the branch-<strong>and</strong>-bound <strong>method</strong> is the order in which<br />

the branches are evaluated. Choosing this order in an intelligent fashion can significantly<br />

reduce the number of asteroid sequences that require low-thrust trajectory <strong>optimization</strong>.<br />

If an asteroid sequence with a high final mass is evaluated early in the process, then more<br />

branches will be pruned out than if all low mass sequences are evaluated initially. One<br />

way to choose the order in which to evaluate the various branches is based on the <strong>pruning</strong><br />

79

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