Families of Transfers from circular low Earth orbit to Distant Prograde Orbit around the Moon

TL;DR

This paper explores the solution space of transfers from low Earth orbit to distant prograde lunar orbits, identifying twelve families of trajectories and analyzing their characteristics for practical mission applications.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive method combining grid search, trajectory continuation, and predictor-corrector techniques to systematically identify and analyze transfer families, including many previously unexplored options.

Findings

Twelve transfer families identified, most being new or underexplored.

Distribution analysis of transfer parameters for practical mission applicability.

Comparison shows the influence of dynamical model choice on transfer solutions.

Abstract

Distant prograde orbits around the Moon exhibit remarkable potential for practical applications such as cislunar surveillance activities and low-energy transfers due to their instability. Previous works on transfers from circular low Earth orbit to distant prograde orbits mainly focused on construction methods based on dynamical structures, lacking a comprehensive analysis of the solution space of this transfer scenario. This paper investigates the solution space and identifies families of transfers from a 167 km circular low Earth orbit to a 1:1 distant prograde orbit. In particular, grid search and trajectory continuation are performed to construct these transfer trajectories. Initial guesses of the transfers are selected in the 1:1 distant prograde orbit through a backward propagation strategy and are then corrected to satisfy specified constraints. Based on the obtained solutions, a linear predictor is derived to predict more feasible solutions and a predictor-corrector continuation method is used to extend the solution space. Twelve transfer families are identified, most of which are new or previously underexplored. The distributions of construction parameters and transfer characteristics of these twelve families are analyzed and discussed, showing which families are applicable to which types of specific practical missions. Comparison between the obtained solution and solution developed by previous works is further performed to imply the effects of the selection of dynamical model on transfer construction.