Orbit design and mission planning for global observation of Jupiter

This paper presents the method created by the National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) team in the 10th China Trajectory Optimization Competition, which entails a 3-year observation mission of 180 regions on Jupiter. The proposed method can be divided into three steps. First, a preliminary analysis and evaluation via an analytical method is undertaken to decide whether the third subtask of the mission, i.e., exploring the Galilean moons, should be ignored. Second, a near-optimal orbit for magnetic field observation is designed by solving an analytical equation. Third, a set of observation windows and their sequence are optimized using a customized genetic algorithm. The final index obtained is 354.505, ranking second out of all teams partaking in the competition.