DESTINY⁺ is an upcoming JAXA Epsilon medium-class mission to fly by the Geminids meteor shower parent body (3200) Phaethon. It will be the world's first spacecraft to escape from a near-geostationary transfer orbit into deep space using a low-thrust propulsion system. In doing so, DESTINY⁺ will demonstrate a number of technologies that include a highly efficient ion engine system, lightweight solar array panels, and advanced asteroid flyby observation instruments. These demonstrations will pave the way for JAXA's envisioned low-cost, high-frequency space exploration plans. Following the Phaethon flyby observation, DESTINY⁺ will visit additional asteroids as its extended mission. The mission design is divided into three phases: a spiral-shaped apogee-raising phase, a multi-lunar-flyby phase to escape Earth, and an interplanetary and asteroids flyby phase. The main challenges include the optimization of the many-revolution low-thrust spiral phase under operational constraints; the design of a multi-lunar-flyby sequence in a multi-body environment; and the design of multiple asteroid flybys connected via Earth gravity assists. This paper shows a novel, practical approach to tackle these complex problems, and presents feasible solutions found within the mass budget and mission constraints. Among them, the baseline solution is shown and discussed in depth; DESTINY⁺ will spend two years raising its apogee with ion engines, followed by four lunar gravity assists, and a flyby of asteroids (3200) Phaethon and (155140) 2005 UD. Finally, the flight operations plan for the spiral phase and the asteroid flyby phase are presented in detail.

DESTINY⁺ is an upcoming JAXA Epsilon medium-class mission to fly by the Geminids meteor shower parent body (3200) Phaethon. It will be the world's first spacecraft to escape from a near-geostationary transfer orbit into deep space using a low-thrust propulsion system. In doing so, DESTINY⁺ will demonstrate a number of technologies that include a highly efficient ion engine system, lightweight solar array panels, and advanced asteroid flyby observation instruments. These demonstrations will pave the way for JAXA's envisioned low-cost, high-frequency space exploration plans. Following the Phaethon flyby observation, DESTINY⁺ will visit additional asteroids as its extended mission. The mission design is divided into three phases: a spiral-shaped apogee-raising phase, a multi-lunar-flyby phase to escape Earth, and an interplanetary and asteroids flyby phase. The main challenges include the optimization of the many-revolution low-thrust spiral phase under operational constraints; the design of a multi-lunar-flyby sequence in a multi-body environment; and the design of multiple asteroid flybys connected via Earth gravity assists. This paper shows a novel, practical approach to tackle these complex problems, and presents feasible solutions found within the mass budget and mission constraints. Among them, the baseline solution is shown and discussed in depth; DESTINY⁺ will spend two years raising its apogee with ion engines, followed by four lunar gravity assists, and a flyby of asteroids (3200) Phaethon and (155140) 2005 UD. Finally, the flight operations plan for the spiral phase and the asteroid flyby phase are presented in detail.

Solar electric propulsion is a key enabling technology that has improved the efficiency of space transport. With specific impulses that are typically ten times higher than the chemical counterpart, electric motors allow a considerable saving in propellant mass at the expense of longer times of flight. However, the length of the transfer process and the specific operational needs require to develop a different operational concept for the navigation and orbit control that can be sustained during the different phases of the mission. In this paper, a trade-off is performed among several operational concepts and solutions for multi-revolutions SEP transfers with application to the DESTINY⁺ mission. The GTO-to-Moon low-thrust transfer is first computed in a high-fidelity model with a tangential thrust strategy and later optimized with a five-order Legendre-Gauss-Lobatto collocation method. The impact of eclipses, radiation, thrust outages and misfires, and orbit tracking is analyzed in detailed and included in the transcript optimal problem as algebraic constraints where possible. Numerical results show that the driving factors for the optimal trajectory are related to the operations of the spacecraft rather than the final mass or time of flight.