A note on transfers from LEOs to GEOs visiting libration points of the Sun–Earth CRTBP

Abstract

The objective of this work is to explore the use the invariant manifold dynamics of the Circular Restricted Three Body Problem to construct transfer trajectories from a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) to a Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO). The underlying idea is to determine orbits that shadow the stable and unstable manifolds of the central manifold of the collinear libration points of the Sun–Earth system, and connect both kinds of orbits around the Earth. The resulting transfer orbits have two legs connected at the libration point region. After a first maneuver performed in the LEO (Δv≈3.1km/s) the spacecraft reaches the neighborhood of the equilibrium point, L1 or L2, driven by the stable manifold of the central manifold of the point. With a small impulse (Δv≈100m/s), the spacecraft is transferred back to a GEO shadowing an orbit of the unstable manifold of a libration point orbit. Once the GEO is reached, an insertion manoeuvre must be done (Δv≈1.2km/s). In the paper the total Δv, together with the total time of flight, are computed considering initial LEOs with different altitudes and several inclinations and final GEOs with inclinations of ±5° around the equator.