A Time-Fuel optimal for spacecraft formation reconfiguration

In this paper, trajectory planning for spacecraft formation reconfiguration is modeled as a MOP (multi-objective optimisation problem) and a niched evolutionary algorithm is proposed. With a problem specific real-valued representation of candidate solutions and evolutionary operators, the algorithm could find the time-fuel front of this problem and generate multiple solutions simultaneously. Higher selected probability of better individuals and the diversity of the front are guaranteed by equivalence class sharing. The algorithm is immune to issues of local minima and solutions are global optimal or near global optimal.