Abstract:

From the Apollo mission to the Moon, to the Voyager 1 and 2 missions to the Outer Solar System, engineers rely on trajectory optimization techniques to design for the path that reaches the target and fulfils the mission objective. The speaker will give a broad overview of the classical trajectory optimization methods, as well as techniques developed in recent years such as global optimization, multi-objective, etc. Several examples will be presented with missions to land on the Moon, to visit multiple asteroids, sample return from a Martian Moon, and settling in the Milky Way Galaxy - a futuristic problem from the Global Trajectory Optimization Competition. Practical tips on solving optimization problems will be shared based on the speaker’s experience.

Bio:

Chit Hong 'Hippo' Yam is a mission analyst of the lunar lander team. He specializes on trajectory design and optimization as well as mass estimation. He was born and raised in Hong Kong and received his Ph.D. from Purdue University, where Neil Armstrong was an alumni. Before joining ispace, he has worked at ESA-ESTEC and JAXA-ISAS as a research fellow. He designed the Cassini ring hopping trajectory at Saturn, helped designing the mission of a micro satellite PROCYON in collaboration with The University of Tokyo, and won the 8th global trajectory optimization competition in the ESA-JAXA joint team.