Optimization of interplanetary low-thrust transfer trajectory using enhanced transcription and collocation

Although the standard transcription and collocation scheme is available to design and optimize the interplanetary low-thrust transfer trajectory, its precision is low. This paper presents an enhanced transcription scheme for two integrator orbit dynamics system. Without increasing the system constraints, the enhanced scheme improved the precision based on fourth-degree Gauss-Labatto integration rule. Taking the example of low-thrust minimum-fuel Earth-Venus transfer trajectory, two different transcription schemes were used to optimize the design and the optimization result was analyzed as well. The numerical result validates the efficiency of the enhanced transcription scheme.