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Published September 2004 | public
Journal Article Open

Connecting orbits and invariant manifolds in the spatial restricted three-body problem

Abstract

The invariant manifold structures of the collinear libration points for the restricted three-body problem provide the framework for understanding transport phenomena from a geometrical point of view. In particular, the stable and unstable invariant manifold tubes associated with libration point orbits are the phase space conduits transporting material between primary bodies for separate three-body systems. These tubes can be used to construct new spacecraft trajectories, such as a 'Petit Grand Tour' of the moons of Jupiter. Previous work focused on the planar circular restricted three-body problem. This work extends the results to the three-dimensional case. Besides providing a full description of different kinds of libration motions in a large vicinity of these points, this paper numerically demonstrates the existence of heteroclinic connections between pairs of libration orbits, one around the libration point L_1 and the other around L_2. Since these connections are asymptotic orbits, no manoeuvre is needed to perform the transfer from one libration point orbit to the other. A knowledge of these orbits can be very useful in the design of missions such as the Genesis Discovery Mission, and may provide the backbone for other interesting orbits in the future.

Additional Information

© 2004 IOP Publishing Ltd. Received 21 August 2003, in final form 24 March 2004. Published 27 May 2004. Print publication: Issue 5 (September 2004). Recommended by A Chenciner. This work was carried out in part at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. In addition, the work was partially supported by the Caltech President's Fund, the NSF/ITR Grant ACI-0204932, the Spanish Grant BFM2000–09054 and the Catalan grant CIRIT 2001–70.

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August 22, 2023
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