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End-of-Life Considerations for Early Cislunar Constellation Design

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Ismael Rodriguez Sesma

Project Timeline

Jan 2025 - Current

OVERVIEW

As cislunar activity accelerates (Artemis, commercial relays, navigation beacons), the Earth–Moon system risks repeating the congestion and “design-now, mitigate-later” pattern seen in LEO. This project developed a quantitative, early-design framework that treats end-of-life (EOL) disposal feasibility as a first-class objective in cislunar spacecraft constellation design, rather than an operational afterthought. The core contribution is a novel End-of-Life Capability Metric (ECM), a dimensionless sustainability indicator that scores a constellation architecture by combining: (1) the fraction of satellites that can successfully reach a safe terminal state (2) the propellant efficiency of disposal maneuvers (3) the aggregated risk of execution failure, post-disposal containment loss, and collision exposure. This ECM is embedded into a multi-objective optimization formulation alongside traditional objectives such as coverage, orbit stability, and spacecraft count/cost, enabling explicit trade-offs between mission performance and long-term stewardship. Methodologically, the framework unifies three modeling domains: CR3BP dynamical propagation (to capture Earth–Moon multi-body effects and instability pathways), constellation architecture evaluation (coverage and stability), and EOL strategy modeling across disposal pathways such as lunar impact, heliocentric escape, and cislunar graveyard options. The implementation leverages high-fidelity periodic orbit initial conditions (via the JPL three-body periodic orbit database) and uses systematic trade-space exploration to identify architectures that maintain performance while improving disposal robustness. Case studies show that including EOL capability can materially change the “best” constellation designs, often achieving comparable coverage with reduced long-term risk and minimal additional cost.

HighlightS

  • Developed a novel End-of-Life Capability Metric (ECM) to quantify constellation sustainability, explicitly capturing (i) disposal success fraction, (ii) propellant efficiency, and (iii) aggregated operational + dynamical risk
  • Embedded sustainability into the architecture optimization loop by extending a cislunar multi-objective formulation to include ECM alongside performance, stability, and spacecraft count/cost, enabling direct trade-offs between mission utility and responsible disposal
  • Built a decision-support analysis framework to propagate candidate cislunar orbits under CR3BP dynamics, compute constellation-level metrics, and evaluate ECM across many configurations
  • Leveraged high-fidelity periodic orbit data (Halo, Lyapunov, DRO families) from the JPL Three-Body Periodic Orbits API/database to seed architectures and focus effort on architecture-level evaluation rather than orbit generation
  • Formalized cislunar disposal as a multi-objective problem and compared practical EOL pathways including lunar impact, heliocentric escape, and cislunar graveyard strategies with typical maneuver costs
  • Introduced probabilistic, reliability-style risk modeling inside ECM (execution failure, loss of containment, collision risk), using hazard-rate accumulation to keep risk terms normalized and physically interpretable
  • Performed systematic trade-space exploration using DOE, enabling sensitivity/interaction analysis and supporting ANOVA/regression-style post-processing

SKILLS

Cislunar astrodynamicsMission analysisNumerical simulationStability analysisMulti-objective optimizationTrade studiesProbabilistic risk modelingDesign of Experiments (DOE)Sensitivity analysisSustainability-by-designDecision-support framework developmentPolicy-aware engineering framing

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Ismael Rodriguez Sesma

Aerospace Engineer & Systems Designer

I'm an aerospace engineer pursuing dual MSc degrees at Georgia Tech and Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, specializing in multidisciplinary simulation and model-based systems engineering. With experience in aircraft design, propulsion systems, and structural analysis, I develop integrated simulation models using MATLAB, Python, and ANSYS to validate complex mechanical and thermal systems. My background spans from theoretical aerodynamics to practical design engineering, with proven expertise in reducing prototype cycles and improving design traceability through MBSE principles.

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