Orbit Maintenance and Navigation of Human Spacecraft at Cislunar Near Rectilinear Halo Orbits

Multiple studies have concluded that Earth-Moon libration point orbits are attractive candidates for staging operations. The Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO), a member of the Earth-Moon halo orbit family, has been singularly demonstrated to meet multi-mission architectural constraints. In this paper, the challenges associated with operating human spacecraft in the NRHO are evaluated. Navigation accuracies and human vehicle process noise effects are applied to various station keeping strategies in order to obtain a reliable orbit maintenance algorithm. Additionally, the ability to absorb missed burns, construct phasing maneuvers to avoid eclipses and conduct rendezvous and proximity operations are examined.

[1]  Yuri Ulybyshev.  Long-Term Station Keeping of Space Station in Lunar Halo Orbits , 2015 .

[2]  Cody R. Short.  Flow-informed strategies for trajectory design and analysis , 2016 .

[3]  Renato Zanetti,et al.  Multiple Event Triggers in Linear Covariance Analysis for Spacecraft Rendezvous , 2010 .

[4]  Renato Zanetti,et al.  Navigation and Dispersion Analysis of the First Orion Exploration Mission , 2015 .

[5]  Diane C. Davis,et al.  Targeting Cislunar Near Rectilinear Halo Orbits for Human Space Exploration , 2017 .

[6]  Roland Martinez,et al.  Options for staging orbits in cislunar space , 2016, 2016 IEEE Aerospace Conference.

[7]  Donald R. Smith,et al.  An introduction to continuum mechanics -after Truesdell and Noll , 1993 .

[8]  K. Howell,et al.  Design of Optimal Low-Thrust Lunar Pole-Sitter Missions , 2011 .

[9]  Kathleen C. Howell,et al.  Multibody Orbit Architectures for Lunar South Pole Coverage , 2008 .

[10]  Kathleen C. Howell,et al.  An Adaptive, Receding-Horizon Guidance Strategy for Solar Sail Trajectories , 2012 .

[11]  D. Woffinden,et al.  Linear Covariance Analysis for a Lunar Lander , 2017 .

[12]  Daniel Cosgrove,et al.  Stationkeeping of the First Earth-Moon Libration Orbiters: The ARTEMIS Mission , 2011 .

[13]  David K. Geller,et al.  Linear Covariance Techniques for Orbital Rendezvous Analysis and Autonomous Onboard Mission Planning , 2005 .

[14]  Amanda F. Haapala,et al.  Preliminary Design Considerations for Access and Operations in Earth-Moon L1/L2 Orbits , 2013 .

[15]  Kathleen C. Howell,et al.  Stationkeeping of Lissajous Trajectories in the Earth-Moon System with Applications to ARTEMIS , 2010 .

[16]  John V. Breakwell,et al.  The ‘Halo’ family of 3-dimensional periodic orbits in the Earth-Moon restricted 3-body problem , 1979 .

[17]  John V. Breakwell,et al.  Almost rectilinear halo orbits , 1982 .

[18]  Jonathan M. Brown,et al.  Applying Dynamical Systems Theory to Optimize Libration Point Orbit Stationkeeping Maneuvers for WIND , 2014 .