For capture to a 200-km circular orbit around Europa, millions of different points along the orbit are simulated in the Jupiter-Europa Restricted 3-Body Problem. The transfers exist as members of families of trajectories, where certain families consistently outperform the others. The trajectories are not sensitive to changes in inclination for the final circular orbit. The top performing trajectories appear to follow the invariant manifolds of L2 Lyapunov orbits for capture into a retrograde orbit, and in some cases saving up to 40% of the from the patched 2-body problem. Transfers are attached to the current nominal mission for NASA's Jupiter-Europa Orbiter, where the total cost is roughly 100 m/s less than the baseline mission.
Multi-Body Capture to Low-altitude Circular Orbits at Europa
AAS/AIAA Astrodynamics Specialist Conference ; 2011 ; Girdwood, AK, United States
31.07.2011
Aufsatz (Konferenz)
Keine Angabe
Englisch
Multi-Body Capture to Low-Altitude Circular Orbits at Europa (AAS 11-427)
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