Do you want some porkchop?

Jorge Martinez

Aerospace Engineer and Senior Software Developer

Latest missions to Mars

Why is everyone launching and arriving at the same time to Mars?

Mission	Launch Date	Arrival Date
Hope (UAE)	20 July 2020	9 February 2021
Tianwen-1	23 July 2020	10 February 2021
Perseverance	30 July 2020	18 February 2021

Because of the weather
Because of low tax rates in Mars
There is a Python conference in Mars
Other

Navigating throught space

You need to solve Lambert’s problem to find the orbit between two points in space.

Input:

Gravity parameter
Position at origin
Position at arrival
Time of flight

Solution:

Velocity at origin
Velocity at arrival

Lamberthub: install

Lamberthub: usage

Lamberthub is a library containing a set of algorithms for solving Lambert’s problem.

from lamberthub import authorYYYY


v1, v2 = authorYYYY(
    mu, r1, r2, tof, M=0, prograde=True, low_path=True,  # Type of solution
    maxiter=35, atol=1e-5, rtol=1e-7, full_output=False  # Iteration config
)

The launch and arrival velocities are used to compute the impulses of the maneuver.

Porkchop plots

Quick way of visualizing the solution space:

The more energy, the more fuel you need
The more fuel, the less payload you can carry
Low energy trajectories are desired
Fast arrival times may be desired too