Abstract
Near Rectilinear Halo Orbits (NRHO) have been recently identified as suitable location for a cislunar space station, to orbit in the Earth–Moon vicinity and offer long-term infrastructural services to manned and unmanned missions to the Moon and further. Indeed, to reliably perform rendezvous and docking/undocking phases between space vehicles orbiting on highly non-Keplerian orbits, such as NRHOs, represents a fundamental key technology. Rendezvous is well-known for Earth-centred missions, while no mission ever performed it on non-Keplerian orbits. The paper critically discusses the adopted approach and the obtained results in modelling the non-Keplerian relative dynamics and in synthesizing the guidance, to safely rendezvous and dock on NRHOs. The entire study is strongly driven by engineering constraints and mission requirements which lead the practical implementation. The dynamics intrinsic non-linearity—which makes the trajectories highly sensitive to small deviations—is here exploited to benefit both rendezvous operations and safety. The paper shows the relative trajectories, designed in a way that both NRHO central and unstable manifolds are used: the former to ensure the chaser relative orbit to be periodic with respect to the target, the latter to answer the passive safety philosophy here preferred. In fact, chaser deviation from target is naturally obtained, whenever on an unstable direction. Along the approaching trajectory, two holding points are assumed: on the central manifold the farthest, at about 100 km from the target, to prepare for the final approach; if a no-go is commanded, the spacecraft hovers on the central manifold, waiting for the next approach opportunity. The closest holding point is designed to lay on the unstable manifold direction, to privilege risk mitigation through passive safety, since if no active control occurs, the chaser—now just meters away from the target—naturally drifts away. The relative trajectory and approach strategy design, driven by the guidance and mission operations definition in nominal and non-nominal scenarios, is discussed in the paper: the simulations and the analyses that led to the approach corridor shape, keep-out zones radius and collision avoidance manoeuvres settling are here reported. The practical case of the cislunar space gateway servicing is here exploited to present the proposed rendezvous and approach techniques for non-Keplerian scenarios and to highlight the GRANO software tool—developed by the authors at Politecnico di Milano, ASTRA Team—flexibility for general application in the n-body framework.
Similar content being viewed by others
Abbreviations
- NRHO:
-
Near Rectilinear Halo Orbits
- RDV:
-
Rendezvous
- KOZ:
-
Keep-out zones
- CAM:
-
Collision avoidance manoeuvres
- STM:
-
State transition matrix
References
Colagrossi A, Lavagna M (2017) Preliminary results on the dynamics of large and flexible space structures. Acta Astronaut 134:355–367. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actaastro.2017.02.020
Colagrossi A, Lavagna M (2018) Cislunar non-Keplerian orbits rendezvous and docking: 6DOF guidance and control. In: Proceedings of 69th international astronautical congress (IAC 2018): involving everyone, Bremen, Germany, 1–5 October 2018 (submitted)
Colagrossi A, Lavagna M (2017) Dynamics and control of modular and extended space structures in cislunar environment. In: Proceedings of 26th international symposium on space flight dynamics (ISSFD), Matsuyama, Japan, 3–9 June 2017
Luquette RJ (2006) Nonlinear control design techniques for precision formation flying at lagrange points (Ph.D. dissertation), University of Maryland, College Park. Retrieved from Digital Repository at the University of Maryland (DRUM). http://hdl.handle.net/1903/4130
Bucci L, Lavagna M, Jehn R (2017) Station keeping techniques for near rectilinear orbits in the Earth–Moon system. In: Proceedings of 10th international ESA conference on GNC systems, Salzburg, Austria, 29 May–2 June 2017
Bucci L, Lavagna M, Renk F (2017) Relative dynamics analysis and rendezvous techniques for lunar Near Rectilinear Halo Orbits. In: Proceedings of 68th international astronautical congress (IAC 2017): unlocking imagination, fostering innovation and strengthening security, Adelaide, Australia, 25–29 September 2017
Bucci L, Lavagna M, Renk F (2018) Phasing and rendezvous operations on non-Keplerian orbits in the Earth–Moon system. In: Proceedings of 69th international astronautical congress (IAC 2018): involving everyone, Bremen, Germany, 1–5 October 2018 (submitted)
Colagrossi A, Lavagna M (2018) Dynamical analysis of rendezvous and docking with very large space infrastructures in non-Keplerian orbits. CEAS Space J 10:87–99. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12567-017-0174-4
Colagrossi A, Lavagna M (2017) Assembly and operations for a cislunar orbit space station. In: Proceedings of 68th international astronautical congress (IAC 2017): unlocking imagination, fostering innovation and strengthening security, Adelaide, Australia, 25–29 September 2017
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Bucci, L., Colagrossi, A. & Lavagna, M. Rendezvous in Lunar Near Rectilinear Halo Orbits. Adv. Astronaut. Sci. Technol. 1, 39–43 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42423-018-0012-6
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42423-018-0012-6