Prof. Jörg Fliege, gave a lecture titled “Optimization in Space: Problems in Spacecraft Trajectory Optimization” at AMSS on 5, September 2017. 

In trajectory optimization, the optimal path of a flight system or a group of flight systems is searched for, often in an interplanetary setting: they are in search of trajectories for one or more space crafts. On the one hand, this is a well-developed field of research, in which commercial software packages are already available for various scenarios. On the other hand, the computation of such trajectories can be rather demanding, especially when low-thrust missions with long travel times (e.g., years) are considered. Such missions invariably involve gravitational slingshot maneuvers at various celestial bodies in order to save propellant or time. Moreover, maneuvers involve vastly different time scales: years of coasting can be followed by course corrections on a daily basis. In this talk, he gave an overview over trajectory optimization for space vehicles and highlight some recent algorithmic developments. 

Prof. Jörg Fliege obtained his PhD in Math from the Univ. of Dortmund, Germany, in 1997. After visiting positions at the Univ. of Berkeley (USA), Brussels (Belgium), and Erlangen-Nuremberg (Germany) he was awarded an associate professorship at the Univ. of Birmingham (UK) in 2004 and a full professorship at the Univ. of Southampton (UK) in 2007. He is Head of the OR Group at the Univ. of Southampton, the largest group of OR in the UK, and a Fellow of the OR Society of the UK. He is a member of the steering group of the Space Trajectory Analysis project of the European Space Agency, and associate editor of "Computational and Applied Math" and "Applied Math and Computation".