A new constellation configuration scheme for communicating architecture in cislunar space
- Paper number
IAC-06-A3.4.03
- Author
Prof. Xu Shijie, Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, China
- Coauthor
Mr. Xu Ming, Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, China
- Year
2006
- Abstract
With the increased interests in lunar exploration and development, manned and unmanned lunar surface missions will become more and more frequent in future decades. In particular, with the construct of lunar laboratory and lunar base, large numbers of data and images need to be transmitted from the Moon to the Earth (or reverse). Some of the missions, for example, the manned exploration on lunar surface, require real-time communication. The communication architecture in cislunar space, therefore, becomes a crucial problem.
In this paper, a new constellation configuration scheme is proposed for the communication architecture in the cislunar space. The constellation consists of four satellites which are respectively located in the vicinity of libration points L2, L3, L4 and L5 of Earth-Moon system. The constellation is able to cover a majority of the earth’s and the lunar surfaces, and to provide communication for any two points inside the cover region near real-timely (with time delay of 2-3s ). The satellites located in the vicinity of L2 and L3 motion on different Lissajous orbit respectively, while the other two satellites are distributed on the quasi-periodic orbits around L4 and L5 that bifurcate from the simple Earth-Moon Model without the solar attraction (R3BP).
To understand the capability of the communication architecture, the cover regions of both Earth’s and lunar surface are computed for each satellite. Then, the entire cover region for the constellation is obtained. The cover region for the communication architecture ranges from 78.5% to 99.2% of Earth’s and lunar surfaces, which depends on the amplitudes of libration orbit. Furthermore, the remainder cover region is also given when some of the satellites happen to fail.
To ascertain the costs associated with these missions, the Delta-V for stationkeeping about the four Earth-Moon libration orbits are investigated. Analysis and computation show that these costs can range from tens meters per second per year for the stable triangular L4 and L5 locations to hundreds per second for the unstable co-linear L2 and L3 locations. The stationkeeping cost depends on several parameters, such as orbit amplitudes, mismodeled accelerations due to solar radiation pressure, other planetary gravity, the calibration of the propulsion system, the initial orbital velocities, and the navigation accuracy. These errors are taken into account in the non-linear control efforts to estimate the yearly stationkeeping costs for the four Earth-Moon libration orbits.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
IAC-06-A3.4.03.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).
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