Quick Trajectory Optimization Method for Mars Airplane Based on Adaptive Gauss Pseudospectral Method

Abstract This paper gives a new method based on adaptive Gauss pseudospectral method for quick trajectory optimization problem of Mars airplane. The method converts the trajectory optimization problem to a non-linear programming problem, taking into account for the dynamic constrains, the boundary constrains, the path constrains and the control constrains during the cruise phase of the Mars airplane. And the sequential quadratic programming is adapted to solve the non-linear programming problem. In combination with the adaptive Gauss pseudospectral method and sequential quadratic programming in Matlab, numerical results of the optimal trajectory with 267 collocations could be obtained in 800s with an approximation accuracy of 10−6.