Mission Planning and Operation Director (M-POD) for Space Access Vehicles

The ultimate goal of the proposed Mission Planning and Operation Director (M-POD) for Space Access Vehicles, is to develop a novel radical approach for mission planning and operation that uses principles of dynamic inversion and constraint orthogonal polynomial basis (COPB) functions for solving a two-point boundary value problem for a non-flat (under-actuated) non-linear differential equation of motion. The successful M-POD technology will allow mission planners to prepare a complete mission plan in a matter of hours instead of months. MPOD architecture is envisioned with an off-line component that defines and designs an optimal and nominal mission plan, and an online component that assists in overcoming any off-nominal conditions by trajectory reshaping and retargeting. Another major outcome of this effort is the advancement in the technology for real time on-line trajectory solution under feasibility constraints. The COPB functions facilitate implementation of boundary and in-flight constraints and the dynamic inversion approach allows solving a set of algebraic equations, strictly satisfying the non-linear differential equations of motion. Our recent investigations have demonstrated that combination of dynamic inversion and smooth trajectory functional representation using COPB functions, provide a powerful technique for fast computation of feasible trajectories for a dynamical system.