The flight of a spacecraft in the Moon's vicinity is accurately modelled as a three‐body problem with Earth, the Moon, and the spacecraft as the three bodies. However, since the mass of the spacecraft is negligible in comparison with the masses of Earth and the Moon, the concerned problem is said to be a restricted three‐body problem. Lagrange showed that certain particular solutions of the three‐body problem exist when the motion of the three bodies is always confined to a single plane. These are discussed next in this chapter. Since the motion of the primaries is known, the solution to the circular restricted three‐body problem determines the motion of the negligible mass relative to the primaries. The equations of motion are resolved in a synodic frame with the origin at the barycentre, and rotating with a non‐dimensional angular velocity.


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    Title :

    Three‐Body Problem


    Contributors:

    Published in:

    Publication date :

    2021-02-01


    Size :

    29 pages




    Type of media :

    Article/Chapter (Book)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English