Abstract

MORENO VEGA, Valery  and  AEYELS, Dirk. The Hohmann transfer and the equivalent fuel consumption property. uct [online]. 2005, vol.9, n.33, pp.11-16. ISSN 1316-4821.

Despite of the great evolution of  the astronautic as a technology in the last 50 years, it remains as one of the fields that demands a constant search of new solutions. One of the underlying topics of the space research efforts is to look for quick solutions in case of unforeseen situations arrives (contingency plans) and of the alternative solutions to be evaluated in different phases of the mission deployment [1]. There exists different kind of maneuvers during the development of a mission, always performed with the objective of guiding the spacecraft from its initial location to its final location following a prescribed trajectory. The well known Hohmann transfer is the most used, and it has been proved that, under certain conditions, it is optimal with respect to the fuel consumption. In this paper we report on the existence of orbits with equivalent fuel consumption when a maneuver is performed between Keplerian orbits. The condition for the existence of these orbits is given in terms of a critical radius. The applicability of this finding for designing contingency plans is illustrated by means of two examples.

Keywords : Contingency Plans; Equivalent Orbits; Hohmann Transfers; Keplerian Orbits; Two Body Model.