Transfer from a Lunar Distant Retrograde Orbit to Mars through Lyapunov Orbits

Abstract

Because of the potential of the Lunar Gateway for cislunar operations, in particular, missions to Mars, there is a growing interest in designing trajectories from lunar orbits. This work deals with the development of a low-energy transfer to Mars from a lunar Distant Retrograde Orbit, relying exclusively on the Circular Restricted Three-Body Problem (CR3BP). The full five-body problem (Moon-Earth-spacecraft-Sun-Mars) is decomposed into three different CR3BPs. In each of them, parts of the trajectory are built exploiting invariant manifolds stemming from Lyapunov orbits. These segments are then linked together successively, overlapping the three systems while considering the ephemerides. Dealing with date restrictions for the required configuration of the Earth and Mars, a period from 2027 to 2034 was investigated. Resulting trajectories demonstrate the convenience of the strategy: despite a long time of flight, this approach allows to design low-energy trajectories for cargo missions.