Two and three impulses phasing strategy with a spacecraft orbiting on an Earth–Moon NRHO

Abstract

The increasing interests in Moon exploration have led in recent years to international collaborations between space agencies aimed to assemble and operate the Gateway, an orbiting spaceport located on a Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO) about the second libration point of the Earth–Moon system (EML-2). In this context, transfer strategies between the Earth and the spaceport cover a key role for both assembly and resupply missions. The presented work is thus focused on one leg of the transfer: the phasing maneuver. This work is conducted under the hypotheses of the Circular Restricted Three-Body problem (CR3BP) in which the Earth and the Moon are the only bodies that influence the spacecraft motion. The primaries are assumed to have a circular motion around their common barycenter. Under these hypotheses, is demonstrated the existence of periodic orbits, such as the Halo orbit family, that are exploited to design a proposed phasing maneuver. Two strategies are investigated: Halo parking orbit to NRHO two-impulses transfer and direct phasing with manifold exploitation. The first strategy is an optimal two-impulses transfer departing an EML-2 southern Halo and targeting the baseline NRHO. The second strategy considers the chaser already injected on the Gateway’s NRHO. Poincare maps are employed to identify unstable/stable manifolds intersections in search of low-energy phasing trajectories that leave the reference orbit along the unstable branch before re-entering it via the stable one. Three-impulses transfers with similar costs are found patching together these arcs. The two strategies are thus compared to highlight their advantages and disadvantages with the perspective of a real autonomous cargo mission around the Moon to refurnish the orbiting station.