Chaining simple periodic orbits design based on invariant manifolds in the Circular Restricted Three-Body Problem

Space missions to libration points are an interesting opportunity to perform deep space explorations reducing costs and risks and to obtain better results by taking advantages of invariant manifolds of periodic orbits. This paper studies the chaining of periodic orbits via their invariant manifolds to provide various types of low energy orbits for space exploration, particularly in the Sun-Earth-Moon system. Recent work shows that this approach may be used to design planetary flyby and planetary capture orbits. This shows that the technique for chaining periodic orbits is much more general and widely applicable, and is not restricted to libration missions only. The use of invariant manifolds provides a unified theoretical approach for studying different mission applications. It also provides robust numerical algorithms for the computation and optimization of such trajectories.