Exploring the Trade Space for Two-Maneuver Transfers from Earth to Cislunar Libration Point Orbits

Ricardo Gomez, Purdue University

Abstract

In recent times, as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) focuses on establishing a sustained presence in cislunar space, there has been an increase in planned missions to the cislunar vicinity for lunar exploration. Due to this increase in planned missions, the use of cislunar structures available in the Circular Restricted Three-Body Problem (CRTBP) has become of greater interest. Traditionally, transfers that leverage CRTBP structures in the cislunar vicinity have been generated as point designs. As a consequence of the non-linearity of this model, transitioning these point designs to other epochs or mission scenarios is non-trivial. Hence, a trade space of transfer solutions, that leverage the underlying dynamics, is of interest for rapid mission design. In this study, numerical methods and dynamical systems theory are leveraged to extract available dynamical structures in the model, which are subsequently exploited for transfer design. A trade space of relatively low time of flight, two-maneuver transfers, from a 500 km altitude Low Earth Orbit (LEO) to the Earth-Moon L1Lyapunov orbit family is generated and analyzed.

Degree

M.Sc.

Advisors

Howell, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Design|Aerospace engineering|Astronomy|Mathematics|Systems science

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