Jovian tour trajectory design for the Callisto capture mission

<p indent="0mm">Multiple gravity-assist trajectory design is an indispensable step in giant planetary system exploration missions. In view of China’s future deep space exploration plan, this paper optimizes and designs the Jovian tour trajectory for the Callisto capture mission, and proposes a multi-stage tour trajectory design method to realize the low-consumption transfer of the spacecraft from the Jupiter capture to multi-moon flyby detection to the Callisto scientific orbit in the patch-conic model. First, Corresponding trajectory design methods are given according to different mission phases. Then, the whole mission is divided into three phases, and the Jupiter flyby sequence is given by the Tisserand graph analysis, and three methods of branch and bound, dynamic programming, and leveraging transfer are used to design and optimize, respectively. With the objective of minimizing the velocity increment, the trajectory design schemes are given and analytically compared in the ephemeris model, which can further save the fuel consumption required for the mission compared with the existing results. The proposed multi-stage design method can also be applied to other planetary systems, providing a reference for the trajectory design of future deep space missions.