Transfer Orbit Design for L1 Halo Orbit Based Nanosats

Abstract

Nanosats have been demonstrated the capability of deep space exploration with the availability of onboard control systems, such as propulsion, active attitude control, navigation as well as communication, thermal or other subsystems design required for deep space. Nanosats are usually launched as second ary payloads into different orbits. In this paper, aiming at lunar exploration with nanosats, the concepts that nanosats transfer to the moon from the deployments in geosynchronous transfer orbit(GTO) or released by the upper stage were put forward and the heteroclinic connection between L1 and L2 Lyapunov orbit was designed. In the orbit design, both the dynamical system approach and the low thrust model were used to realize low energy cost orbit transfer in order to satisfy the limited condition of propulsion subsystems.

Keywords

nanosat / cis-lunar transfer / low cost