Lunar space station for providing services to solar libration missions
- Paper number
IAC-05-C1.1.07
- Author
Ms. Elisabet Canalias, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Spain
- Coauthor
Mr. Josep J. Masdemont, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Spain
- Year
2005
- Abstract
The libration points of the Sun-Earth system have proved to be the ideal location for some spatial missions (Sun observation missions such as SOHO, sophisticated space telescopes such as MAP\ldots). Their main drawbacks, however, are the often expensive transfers to reach them and the huge distance from them to the Earth (about 15 million km). By applying dynamical systems theory to the restricted three body problem, some of the problems which these regions present can be solved. For example, space transportation between libration points can take advantage of a kind of asymptotic orbits called homoclinic and heteroclinic connections. These connections belong to the intersection between stable and unstable invariant manifolds of libration point orbits. This means that they asymptoticaly leave the vicinity of one libration orbit to approach another one, following the natural dynamical channels of the problem. The intersection between invariant asymptotic manifolds can be taken a step further, and applied to different restricted three body problems. This could yield free space travel channels within the Solar system. Particularly, one can think of matching manifolds from the Earth-Moon system and the Sun-Earth one. Some manifolds of the libration points of these restricted three body problems lay in energy surfaces which only differ in aproximately 50 m/s. If cheap transfers between the aforementioned manifolds were found, both from the Earth-Moon libration points to the Sun-Earth ones and in the return direction, a space station could be located in orbit around an Earth-Moon libration point in order to provide services to Sun-Earth libration missions. Transfers to the Moon are well studied, even for human missions. In addition, the distance from an Earth parking orbit to the Earth-Moon libration points is much shorter than to the Sun-Earth ones. Consequently, if such a space station existed, the costs and risks of, for example, repairing elements of the satellites orbiting a Sun-Earth libration point would be drastically reduced (remember the Hubble space telescope). Some attempts have been done in order to find trajectories from a so-called Gateway station placed in an Earth-Moon libration point to the Sun-Earth libration points, and return. In the present work, a study is performed of the best way of finding these connecting trajectories. In a first approximation, two uncoupled restricted three body problems will be used. However, in a further stage, the initial seed will be refined and integrated using a four body problem model.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
IAC-05-C1.1.07.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).
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