Earth-Mars transfers through Moon Distant Retrograde Orbits

Abstract

This paper focuses on trajectory design which is relevant for missions that would follow NASA's Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) to further explore and utilize asteroids and eventually human Mars exploration. Assuming that a refueling gas station is present at a given Lunar Distant Retrograde Orbit (DRO), we analyze ways of departing from the Earth to Mars via that DRO. Thus, the analysis and results presented in this paper add a new cis-lunar departure orbit for Earth-Mars missions. Porkchop plots depicting the required C 3 at launch, v ∞ at arrival, Time of Flight (TOF), and total ∆V for various DRO departure and Mars arrival dates are created and compared with results obtained for low ∆V LEO to Mars trajectories. The results show that low ∆V DRO to Mars transfers generally have lower ∆V and TOF than LEO to Mars maneuvers.

Trajectory Optimization and Control Applied to Landing Maneuvers on Phobos from Mars-Phobos Distant Retrograde Orbits

“…Since the radius has only one component along the x-axis, which is A x -dependent, we can say that the essential parameters necessary to define a DRO are [A x , V y ], where V y indicates the y-component of the velocity vector at such location, which is, in fact, the only non-zero component; the x-component and z-component of the velocity vector at the considered starting location are zero. DROs have been identified and studied in the literature, for both Earth-Moon DROs and Mars-Phobos DROs [16,36], as shown in Figure 3. However, in this study, a PSO algorithm will be used to determine a DRO given its x-amplitude, which will be the starting point for the landing trajectory optimization.…”

Modelization of Low-Cost Maneuvers for an Areostationary Preliminary Mission Design

“…We use Matlab software available from [30] to solve the Lambert problem, first obtaining a reduced launch window for the minimum-energy solution. The porkchop plots [31,32] shown in Figure 2 depict the contour lines of constant C 3 in km 2 /s 2 and V ∞ M in km/s for the 2019-2029 departure and the 2020-2030 arrival time frames. It is possible to observe that the launch and arrival windows that give the minimum values approximately repeat every Mars synodic period of about 780 days.…”

“…As can be seen from Equations ( 24) to (31), the periapsis distance, r ps M , and the orbital inclination of the arrival trajectory with respect to Mars, i s M , are the key design parameters in order to minimize the required impulses. Corrections to change the approach asymptotic plane are not considered, and neither are the combinations of the capture maneuver with the first Hohmann maneuver or the inclination maneuver with the second Hohmann maneuver.…”

Autonomous Navigation for Mars Exploration

“…The second one is the cruise flight phase. The prober will fly to the Mars by several times of orbit transfer [6]. The third one is the Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) phase [7].…”