Interplanetary Mission Design and Guidance Based on Space Manifold Dynamics

Abstract

Mission design and guidance for interplanetary travel utilizing the manifold structure of restricted three-body problem is investigated. Interplanetary space vehicle is simultaneously influenced by the gravitational attraction of multiple celestial bodies. Coupled, multi-body dynamics is classically solved by approximating it as a sequence of two-body problems. Based on the recent interest in the application of multi-body dynamics in the space mission design, a mission segment for transfer from an L1 Lyapunov orbit to L2 Lyapunov orbit is studied for the Earth-Moon system. Mission designs with manifold structure may not always yield continuous trajectories. Moreover, initial condition of the mission may not lie on the manifold. A closed loop guidance scheme based on feedback linearization is developed to ensure that the spacecraft tracks the manifold structure irrespective of the initial deviations and trajectory discontinuities.