Acceleration-Based Switching Surfaces for Impulsive Trajectory Design Between Cislunar Libration Point Orbits

Abstract

A method is proposed to generate an initial guess for impulsive trajectory design in the circular restricted three-body problem. The method uses acceleration-based switching surfaces to obtain near-impulsive solutions. A numerical continuation is performed on the maximum acceleration value to find near-impulsive solutions. A nonlinear programming problem is formulated by providing primer vector based analytical gradients. The solution space is narrowed down to aid the optimizer with the use of the near-impulsive solutions. The proposed method is used for the trajectory design of four different maneuvers between L1 and L2 Halo orbits in the Earth–Moon system. The results demonstrate the utility of the proposed method in generating extremal impulsive trajectories.