In the present paper several strategies for impulsive orbit transfer between circular orbits are compared. From analytical formulas it turns out that N = 3 is the maximum number of impulses for optimal transfers between coplanar circular orbits. Partial analytical results and numerical evidence support the conclusion that three is also the maximum number of impulses in the non planar case. The authors are not aware of a direct analytical proof of this fact, and such a proof seems difficult because the equations of the optimal distribution of plane variations on several impulses are rather implicit.
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