Rocket Rendezvous at Preassigned Destinations with Optimum

Abstract

The problem of rendezvous of an interceptor rocket vehicle through optimal exit path with a destination rocket vehicle at a preassigned location on the destination orbit has been investigated for non-coaxial coplanar elliptic launch and destination orbits in an inverse square gravitational field. The case, when launch and destination orbits are coplanar circular, is also discussed. In the end numerical results for rendezvous have been obtained taking Earth and Mars orbits as launch and destination orbits respectively.