Trajectory Optimization for Modern Space Missions

In mission-critical trajectory planning, every hour lost to computational barriers risks payload capacity, safety margins, and launch windows. Aerospace engineers and mission planners face unprecedented complexity:

• Constellation deployment coordinating hundreds of satellites across dynamic orbits.
• On-orbit servicing logistics requiring real-time adjustments for fuel constraints, collision risks, and priority targets.
• Interorbit transfers with multi-body gravity assists and nonlinear propulsion models.

These problems share a common trait: they’re NP-hard – a class of optimization challenges where solution spaces grow exponentially with variables. Classical integer or nonlinear programming techniques, while robust for smaller problems, buckle as combinatorial variables increases..

Why Classical Methods Hit a Wall

1. Combinatorial Barriers: Evaluating all trajectory permutations for large-scale missions (e.g.,  satellite deployments) is computationally infeasible.
2. Local Minima Traps: Gradient-based solvers often settle for "good-enough" trajectories, missing globally optimal paths.
3. Time-Resource Tradeoffs: High-fidelity optimization demand days or weeks to simulate edge-case scenarios, delaying critical decisions.

The hidden cost? Mission designs constrained by computational limits – not physics.

BQPhy®: Navigating Vast Solution Spaces Efficiently

BQP’s optimization solver, powered by quantum-inspired evolutionary optimization (QIEO), tackles these barriers head-on:

• Escape Local Optima: Intelligently explores disconnected regions of the solution space to discover globally optimal trajectories (e.g., fuel-efficient lunar gateway transitions).
• Accelerated Convergence: Reduces iterations needed for high-quality solutions while leveraging GPU parallelism to minimize compute time per iteration.
• Handling Combinatorial Complexity : Handles NP-hard variables – from discrete thruster burns to mixed-integer orbital constraints – without simplifications.

For aerospace teams, this translates to:

• Exploring design spaces orders of magnitude larger than classical methods allow.
• Achieving higher-fidelity solutions with complex constraints (e.g., radiation avoidance, debris fields).
•  Delivering actionable trajectories in hours instead of days.

The New Paradigm: Optimization at Scale

As missions grow more ambitious – "workaround-based" design becomes a strategic liability. BQPhy®’s solver embeds directly into existing digital engineering workflows, turning intractable problems into optimized mission blueprints.