Optimal Solution of Collision Avoidance Maneuver with Multiple Space Debris

In this paper, the authors introduced a new approach to find the optimal collision avoidance maneuver considering multi threatening objects within short period, while minimizing the fuel consumption and satisfying the acceptable collision probability. A preliminary effort in applying a genetic algorithm (GA) to those kinds of problems has also been demonstrated through a simulation study with a simple case problem. And then, GA is applied to the complex case problem including multi-threatening objects. Two distinct collision avoidance maneuvers are dealt with: the first is in-track direction of collision avoidance maneuver. The second considers radial, in-track, and cross-track direction maneuvers. The results show that the first case violates the collision probability threshold, while the second case does not violate the threshold with satisfaction of all conditions. And the second case is consumed fuel less than the first case in minimization problem of fuel consumption. Various factors for analyzing and planning the optimal collision avoidance maneuver are also presented.