Path: Interplanetary/PlanarOptimization
% Mars planar orbit with rendezvous optimization Short-stay Mars mission. Calculate the outbound leg first then use a rendezvous optimization to find the return trajectory for a non-optimal angle. Mars: SMA 1.523679 AU, eccentricity 0.0934 apehelion: 1.666 AU perihelion: 1.3814 AU A good solution has a smooth change in phi and linear change in u (up until switch point, then down). If there is excess radial velocity on arrival, try increasing the transit time. If any of the angles become near pi or -pi, the optimization gets confused. It can help to manually set these value to a neighboring value and rerun the optimization from the prior values. Optimal angle solutions can be reach in about 50 iterations. Rendezvous solutions take longer. See also: PlanarHelioOptimal, SimulatePlanarHelioTrajectory, PlanetHelioPhase, StraightLineReport, OrbitRoundTripTransferTimes, PlanarHelioRendezvousOptimal