Low-energy lunar transfers using spatial transit orbits

This paper is concerned with natural and artificial low-energy lunar transfers in three-dimensional space. The main contribution of this paper is that the limitations of the planar manifold assumption, which is adopted in previous low-energy orbit design methods, are avoided by describing the transfer orbits with more realistic spatial transit and non-transit orbits. To start, the limitations of the previous design methods for the low-energy trajectories are highlighted, and the boundaries of the spatial transit orbits, which can enter into or escape from the potential well near the Moon through the L1 or L2 bottleneck regions of the zero velocity surface, are defined on a Poincaré section by using the necessary and sufficient condition of transition. Next, by considering the dominant gravity bodies in different orbit segments the motion near the Moon is analyzed in the Earth-Moon circular restricted three-body problem (CR3BP). For natural celestial bodies, the statistical characteristics of the lunar collision trajectories are studied. For the artificial celestial bodies, the investigation is focused on the achievable range of inclination and height of the low lunar orbit (LLO). Then, the motion between the Earth and the Moon is studied in the Earth-Moon based Sun-perturbed bicircular four-body problem (B4BP). For natural and artificial celestial bodies, the Earth-origin trajectories and the trajectories from the low Earth orbits are analyzed. Compared to the current planar manifold based design methods, the technique introduced in this paper can evaluate the lunar transfer orbits more accurately. Also, some lunar transfer trajectories which do not exist in the manifold based models can be found, and the heights and inclinations of the parking orbits around the Earth and the Moon can also be analyzed.