Low-Energy and Low-Thrust Exploration Tour of Saturnian Moons with Full Lunar Surface Coverage

TL;DR

This paper designs a low-energy, low-thrust mission trajectory to explore Saturn's moons with full surface coverage, optimizing fuel use and observational efficiency using advanced dynamical models and guidance laws.

Contribution

It introduces a novel trajectory design method combining halo orbit staging, invariant manifolds, and perturbation analysis for comprehensive moon surface exploration.

Findings

Achieves full lunar surface coverage with low fuel consumption.

Provides a detailed dynamical model including gravitational perturbations.

Offers an alternative exploration approach with comparable duration and increased observation time.

Abstract

This study presents the trajectory design for a mission touring Saturn's Inner Large Moons (Rhea, Dione, Tethys, Enceladus, and Mimas) engineered to meet observational requirements, including full surface coverage, while ensuring low fuel consumption and compatibility with current power and propulsion technologies (radioisotope thermoelectric generators and Hall effect thrusters). The tour begins at Rhea and ends at Mimas, using a trajectory concept that alternates between extended observation phases around each moon and Saturn centered low-thrust spiral arcs to transition efficiently to the next target. The J2-perturbed Circular Restricted Three-Body Problem is adopted to design exploration paths, with halo orbits serving as staging points for heteroclinic and homoclinic loops that enable prolonged, repeated, and comprehensive surface reconnaissance (including critical regions such as Enceladus poles, where geological activity produces intense plumes). Stable and unstable hyperbolic invariant manifolds of the halo orbits act as departure and arrival gateways for propelled inter-moon transfers, modeled in an ephemeris-based framework including gravitational perturbations from the moons, the Sun, and Saturn's oblateness. The dynamical model setup is guided by a rigorous perturbation analysis to maximize computational efficiency while maintaining high fidelity trajectory design. A locally optimal guidance law minimizes propellant consumption. The proposed tour offers an alternative to traditional flyby missions, providing comparable total duration but greater observing time and reduced fuel requirements, and advances previous work by achieving both complete lunar surface coverage and high-fidelity modeling.