Multiple Revolution Solutions to Lambert's Problem
Abstract
In minimum-fuel impulsive spacecraft trajectories, long-duration
coast arcs between thrust impulses can occur.
If the coast time is long enough to allow one or more complete
revolutions of the central body, the solution becomes complicated.
Lambert's Problem, which is
the determination of the orbit,
given the terminal radius vectors and the transfer time, has a multiplicity
of solutions.
For a transfer time long enough to allow N
revolutions of the central body there exist 2N + 1
trajectories which satisfy the boundary-value problem.
An algorithm based on the classical Lagrange formulation
for an elliptic orbit is developed
and demonstrated which
determines all the
trajectories.