TY - GEN
T1 - A low-thrust lunar tour of the moons of Saturn
AU - Burhani, Burhani M.
AU - Alkhaja, Adham
AU - Fantino, Elena
AU - Le Roux, Roberto Maurice Flores
AU - Alessi, Elisa Maria
N1 - Funding Information:
This work has been supported by Khalifa University of Science and Technology’s internal grants FSU-2018-07 and CIRA-2018-85. The Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, through the ―Severo Ochoa Programme for Centres of Excellence in R&D‖ (CEX2018-000797-S), supported the work R. Flores.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 by Burhani M. Burhani, Adham Alkhaja, Elena Fantino, Roberto Flores, and Elisa Maria Alessi.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - All our knowledge about Saturn and its icy ring system comes from the data obtained during the flybys of Pioneer 11, Voyager 1, Voyager 2 and Cassini, as well as from the observations carried out by Hubble Space Telescope. The discovery of water vapor plumes at the poles of Enceladus and other compelling evidence of the existence of subsurface water in the major moons of Saturn has driven scientific interest and revived plans to return to Saturn. In order to gain insight into the features of this planet and its Inner Large Moons (ILMs)-Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys and Dione-an in situ mission is needed. In general, orbit insertion at a giant planet is very demanding in terms of propellant, due to the large impulse required to achieve capture. It is even more challenging to achieve orbits around moons deep inside the planetary gravitational well, like the ILMs. The majority of the proposed solutions to tour the system of icy moons is based on the patched conics technique with impulsive maneuvers (i.e., chemical propulsion). The more efficient approach presented here is the concept of a lunar tour of the ILMs based on low-thrust (LT) propulsion and low-energy transfers in the circular restricted three-body problems (CR3BP) corresponding to Saturn and each moon. The hyperbolic invariant manifolds of planar Lyapunov orbits around the equilibrium points L1 and L2 of each Saturn-moon system are used to loop around the corresponding moon and to provide initial conditions to move between neighboring moons. These moon-to-moon transfers use a LT control law designed to minimize propellant consumption. LT, combined with a gravity assist with Jupiter, is also applied to reduce the hyperbolic excess speed at Saturn. This enables unpowered capture at Saturn by means of a Titan flyby. Results show that this mission concept saves a significant amount of propellant compared to the Cassini mission. Although LT yields longer transfer times than impulsive maneuvers, the spiraling transfers between moons can be exploited to collect data of the inter-moon environment, rings and moonlets.
AB - All our knowledge about Saturn and its icy ring system comes from the data obtained during the flybys of Pioneer 11, Voyager 1, Voyager 2 and Cassini, as well as from the observations carried out by Hubble Space Telescope. The discovery of water vapor plumes at the poles of Enceladus and other compelling evidence of the existence of subsurface water in the major moons of Saturn has driven scientific interest and revived plans to return to Saturn. In order to gain insight into the features of this planet and its Inner Large Moons (ILMs)-Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys and Dione-an in situ mission is needed. In general, orbit insertion at a giant planet is very demanding in terms of propellant, due to the large impulse required to achieve capture. It is even more challenging to achieve orbits around moons deep inside the planetary gravitational well, like the ILMs. The majority of the proposed solutions to tour the system of icy moons is based on the patched conics technique with impulsive maneuvers (i.e., chemical propulsion). The more efficient approach presented here is the concept of a lunar tour of the ILMs based on low-thrust (LT) propulsion and low-energy transfers in the circular restricted three-body problems (CR3BP) corresponding to Saturn and each moon. The hyperbolic invariant manifolds of planar Lyapunov orbits around the equilibrium points L1 and L2 of each Saturn-moon system are used to loop around the corresponding moon and to provide initial conditions to move between neighboring moons. These moon-to-moon transfers use a LT control law designed to minimize propellant consumption. LT, combined with a gravity assist with Jupiter, is also applied to reduce the hyperbolic excess speed at Saturn. This enables unpowered capture at Saturn by means of a Titan flyby. Results show that this mission concept saves a significant amount of propellant compared to the Cassini mission. Although LT yields longer transfer times than impulsive maneuvers, the spiraling transfers between moons can be exploited to collect data of the inter-moon environment, rings and moonlets.
KW - Gravity assist
KW - Inner large moons
KW - Low-energy orbits
KW - Low-thrust propulsion
KW - Lunar tour
KW - Saturn
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85127800578&partnerID=8YFLogxK
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85127800578
T3 - Proceedings of the International Astronautical Congress, IAC
BT - IAF Astrodynamics Symposium 2021 - Held at the 72nd International Astronautical Congress, IAC 2021
PB - International Astronautical Federation, IAF
T2 - IAF Astrodynamics Symposium 2021 at the 72nd International Astronautical Congress, IAC 2021
Y2 - 25 October 2021 through 29 October 2021
ER -