Geomatics Seminar with Robyn Woollands
We are pleased to announce that Prof. Robyn Woollands will give a talk at ETH Hönggerberg on December 5th at 5 p.m.
On the 5th of December, Prof. Robyn Woollands will give a lecture on "Space Mission Sustainability Leveraging Picard-Chebyshev Methods and Optimal Control". The lecture will take place in presence. You are welcome to distribute this invitation to other interested parties.
Abstract
Spacecraft sustainability is crucial for the long-term exploration and utilization of space. As near-Earth space becomes increasingly more congested, responsible and sustainable management of space assets becomes imperative to ensure the preservation of the space environment. In-space servicing missions enable the extension of the operational life of satellites and other spacecraft, which reduces the frequency of new launches and minimizes space debris. In this talk, two approaches are presented to address challenges associated with accurate and efficient optimal trajectory design for in-space assembly & servicing. The first involves using Picard-Chebyshev methods for accurate and efficient trajectory propagation of satellite swarms considering a high-fidelity spherical harmonic gravity model. Here, most swarm agents rely on gravity information from a neighboring agent which greatly accelerates overall all computation. The second involves introducing a thruster pointing constraint directly into the system dynamics such that when a fueloptimal trajectory is solved for using indirect optimization, the thruster pointing constraint is automatically satisfied, and thus the thruster plume is prevented from contaminating delicate sensors onboard the client. The abovementioned fundamental contributions are one of many important advances towards successful, large-scale and routine in-space servicing and assembly missions.
Bio
external page Robyn Woollands is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Prior to joining Illinois, she worked for almost 4 years as a Mission Design Engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Robyn’s research interests are astrodynamics, trajectory optimization, Picard-Chebyshev methods and space mission design. She is a recipient of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Award for 2024. Robyn graduated with her PhD in Aerospace Engineering from Texas A&M University in 2016. She is a recipient of the Distinguished Graduate Student Doctoral Award for Excellence in Research at Texas A&M University.