Approximate Solutions in Space Mission Design

In this paper, we address multi-objective space mission design problems. We argue that it makes sense from the practical point of view to consider in addition to the `optimal' trajectories (in the Pareto sense) also approximate or nearly optimal solutions since this can lead to a significant larger variety for the decision maker. For this, we suggest a novel MOEA which is a modification of the well-known NSGA-II algorithm equipped with a recently proposed archiving strategy which aims for the storage of the set of approximate solution of a given MOP. Using this algorithm we will examine several space missions and demonstrate the benefit of the novel approach.

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