Libration Transfer Design Using Patched Elliptic Three-Body Models and Graphics Processing Units

Abstract

Design of the transfer from lunar orbits to the sun–Earth libration point region by direct searching in the high-fidelity ephemeris model is an accurate but time-consuming practice. A computationally efficient methodology that takes advantage of the patched elliptic restricted three-body problem model, the power of graphics processing unit parallel computing, and the programming platform of MATLAB is presented. Taking the CHANG’E-2 extension mission as an instance, the proposed implementation obtains almost identical results with that in the ephemeris model and shows significant speedup. Moreover, the methodology can be carried out on inexpensive hardware platforms. Numerical results demonstrate that significant speedups can be achieved using the graphics processing unit parallel computing when compared to solving the same problem on the central processing unit.