Transfers between Jupiter–Ganymede and Jupiter–Europa resonant tori in a concentric circular restricted 4-body model

Abstract

The phenomenon of mean-motion resonance overlapping, which generates heteroclinic connections between unstable resonant orbits, is known to be crucial for the generation of large-scale chaos and global instability in celestial systems. This instability in turn can be profitably leveraged for the purposes of low-energy space mission trajectory design. In most prior work leveraging such phenomena, though, connections were found between orbits resonant with the same moon; however, both Jupiter and Saturn have multiple moons, each having their own set of mean motion resonances. This study will present some results from a search for trajectories between orbits resonant with different Jovian moons, namely Ganymede and Europa. For this, the appropriate model to use is a concentric circular restricted 4-body model, where most unstable mean-motion resonant orbits correspond to 2D tori in a 5D extended phase space. We use GPU-assisted tools inspired by collision detection algorithms from computer graphics to rapidly find near-intersections of Jupiter–Ganymede and Jupiter–Europa resonant orbit manifolds, which correspond to potential transfers. We find the Jupiter–Ganymede 4:3 resonance to be the most promising candidate for trajectories to the key 3:4 Jupiter–Europa resonance, and thus further investigate the properties of 4:3 Jupiter–Ganymede orbits.