Mission Analysis of Hevelius - Lunar Microsatellite Mission
- Paper number
IAC-05-B5.2.09
- Author
Mr. Ettore Scarì, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
- Coauthor
Mr. Matteo Ceriotti, University of Glasgow, United Kingdom
- Coauthor
Ms. Camilla Colombo, University of Glasgow, United Kingdom
- Year
2005
- Abstract
A new recent trend of interest is arising for the Moon, driven by the idea to create a lunar communication bridge with the outer space or an even more challenging lunar station to support interplanetary missions. The progresses made by mission analysts in the field of optimal trajectory design led to a finer comprehension of the Earth-Moon system and the gravitational field generated by their mutual attraction. Nowadays beside the direct transfer exists a set of different solutions to reach the moon that are related to the investigation of the Restricted Three Body Problem (RTBP). In such a dynamical system, studies made by Richardson and Farquhar outlined the possibility to obtain a stable periodical motion around one of the three collinear libration points (Halo Orbits). A natural development of these studies in multi-body dynamic led to the investigation of the manifolds associated to Halo orbits as possible means to obtain low cost transfers to the Moon. In the last years, the works carried out by Koon, Lo, Gomez and Starhville led to the definition of a technique to obtain low energy transfers between two bodies. The strategy based on the invariant manifold theory has revealed its effectiveness in the design of low-energy transfers to the Moon; in fact different solutions outlined the possibility to save up to 22% in total cost, though with a sensible increment in the time of flight. A similar set of solutions has been investigated by Belbruno and Miller leading to the Weak Stability Boundary Moon transfer; in this case the Moon’s captured is due to the intersection of the manifolds associated to the periodic orbits around L2 of the Sun-Earth and Earth-Moon systems. In this paper it is described the mission analysis of “Hevelius-Lunar Microsatellite Mission”. The main goal of the overall mission is to place a net lander on the Dark Side to perform some scientific experiments. Two different micro satellites have been designed to achieve the objective: an orbiter to support the net lander and a carrier with the additional objectives to map the dark side and to work as a probe for the measure of the whole gravitational field of the Moon. The mission analysis design process has been driven by a low cost and low mass objective according to the new tendencies to invest in low cost and low risk missions. The solutions have been investigated through a numerical propagation and optimization technique; the high non-linearity of the problem led the difficult task of finding suitable first guess solutions to initialize the process. An L2 Halo orbit has been selected for the orbiter on the need to have a constant communication bridge between the landers and the Earth and on the objective to keep the maintenance cost as low as possible (88 m/s per year considering perturbations). A manifold exploitation brought to a total 1260 m/s and 31.52 days transfer from a GTO, a best launch date search has been performed too. For the carrier a slightly different strategy has been investigated; indeed the mission requirements suggested to fly the spacecraft in a frozen Moon orbit prior to descent and landing: this solution turned out to be suitable for ground mapping and ideal for the gravitational experiment. The idea then was to exploit a Belbruno transfer. A descent and landing phases then have been analyzed in order to accomplish the overall goal of the mission.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
IAC-05-B5.2.09.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).
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