Low-thrust Interplanetary Trajectories with Missed Thrust Events: a Numerical Approach

The problem under consideration is to drive a spatial vehicle to a target at a given final time while minimizing fuel consumption. This is a classical optimal control problem in a deterministic setting. However temporary stochastic failures of the engine may prevent reaching the target after the engine usage is recovered. Therefore, a stochastic optimal control problem is formulated under the constraint of ensuring a minimal probability of hitting the target. This problem is modeled, improved and finally solved by dualizing the probability constraint and using an Arrow-Hurwicz stochastic algorithm. Numerical results concerning an interplanetary mission are presented.