Preliminary Analysis of Interplanetary Trajectories with Aerogravity and Gravity Assist Maneuvers

In this paper a preliminary analysis of a wide range of mission opportunities, offered by either aerogravity assist or gravity assist manoeuvres, has been carried out. After an accurate validation of aerogravity assist traditional analytical models, according to several different criteria an extensive global search for optimal trajectories has been performed for highenergy missions, resorting to gravity and aerogravity manoeuvres. To this aim, the new preliminary analysis tool PAMSIT, based on some simplified hypotheses, has been developed. This is capable of efficiently and exhaustively exploring the solutions space for this particular problem, considering the feasibility of a trajectory from both the orbital energy and phasing points of view. Then, all found solutions have been classified according to launch and arrival velocities, time of flight and planetary encounters. A comparison between the opportunities offered by gravity manoeuvres and aerogravity manoeuvres will be presented showing the advantages of the latter in all analysed cases. In particular some interesting options for missions to Jupiter and Neptune will be presented.