Fundamentals of Libration Point Mission Design

Discipline: Guidance, Navigation & Control Webcast Air Date: October 19, 2016 The vicinity near the Earth-Moon libration points has recently emerged as a potential location to support future crewed and robotic missions as part of a resilient and evolving space infrastructure. Beyond cislunar space, successful missions to the vicinity of the Sun-Earth/Moon libration points have also been accomplished and other Sun-planet and planet-moon options are being explored. Such mission scenarios offer unprecedented opportunities but involve complex and competing requirements. The mathematical foundations and dynamical structures in this multi-body environment are exploited for trajectory design in planning missions of this type and a new generation of strategies and analysis tools are evolving to enable the practical implementation of the complex new concepts. In particular, the existence of periodic orbits throughout a libration point region serves as a framework and the connections between various families allows movement throughout the region. This webcast will include a discussion of the astrodynamics basics to design such trajectories and some techniques to leverage the dynamical structures.

Dr. Kathleen Howell

11/4/2016 3:00:00 PM