Continuous thrust tangential or perpendicular to the flight direction on a given transfer trajectory in planar Circular Restricted 3-Body Problem

Abstract

This paper presents a systematic study for analytical determination of thrust acceleration magnitude on a given trajectory for a case where the thrust is tangential or perpendicular to the flight direction. The problem has been formulated using the planar Circular Restricted Three-Body Problem. In the numerical application for tangential thrust the transfer from low Earth orbit to planar Lyapunov orbits around L1 and L2 Lagrangian points by a semi-elliptic transfer path is considered. For the case in which the thrust is perpendicular to the flight direction also on a semi-elliptic trajectory, the results are compared to the ones of Miele and Mancuso (2001), and Sandro da Silva Fernandes (2010) in their studies based on a simplified version of the same restricted three-body problem of transferring a spacecraft from a circular low Earth orbit to a circular low Moon orbit.

Keywords

• planar Circular Restricted Three-Body Problem
• given trajectory
• continuous thrust control
• Earth-Moon system
• low Moon orbit
• Lagrangian points