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Applied Sciences
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Advanced Schemes for Lunar Transfer, Descent and Landing
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Advanced Schemes for Lunar Transfer, Descent and Landing

A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Aerospace Science and Engineering".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 January 2024) | Viewed by 4118

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Stefano Carletta

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Aerospace Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome, 00185 Rome, Italy
Interests: low-energy trajectories; attitude control systems development; microsatellite interplanetary missions
Dr. Benjamin K. Malphrus

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Space Science Center, Morehead State University, Morehead, KY 40351, USA
Interests: microsatellite and picosatellite systems engineering; satellite ground operations; physics of interacting galaxies; cosmix x-ray background
Dr. Mauro Pontani

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Astronautical, Electrical, and Energy Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome, 00185 Rome, Italy
Interests: astrodynamics and aerospace trajectory optimization; aerospace mission analysis and design; analytical and numerical methods for trajectory optimization; guidance and control of aerospace vehicles; dynamic game theory applied to aerospace trajectories
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

As never before, since the end of the Apollo missions, the exploration of the Moon has been attracting collective and growing interest from the scientific community. Together with national space agencies and industries, the rapid progress of small satellite (i.e., CubeSat) technology now allows universities and small companies to take part in this new “race to the Moon”.

The goal of this Special Issue is to gather these players’ contributions regarding the development of novel mission strategies, guidance, navigation and control schemes for the exploration of the Moon by means of autonomous spacecraft. The Special Issue aims to collect works dedicated to any phase of a lunar mission, from the transfer to the capture, descent and landing onto the lunar surface. The design of innovative on-board and ground systems at the support of space operations, AI applications, missions synergic with the proposed Lunar Gateway and mission scenarios involving constellations, formations and rovers are also welcome.

Authors are invited to submit research and review papers addressing, but not limited to, the following topics:

  • Novel mission architectures for lunar exploration;
  • Low-energy Earth–Moon transfers and ballistic captures;
  • Guidance strategies for autonomous lunar descent and landing;
  • Navigation and tracking during lunar transfer, descent and landing;
  • AI applications for lunar missions;
  • Control of large structures and satellite formations in the cislunar and translunar space;
  • Libration point orbits design and station-keeping;
  • Lunar constellation design and deployment;
  • Missions at the support of the Lunar Gateway;
  • Design of systems at the support of autonomous lunar exploration missions;
  • Propulsion systems for lunar and deep-space missions.

Dr. Stefano Carletta
Dr. Benjamin K. Malphrus
Dr. Mauro Pontani
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Applied Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Moon exploration
  • Earth–Moon low-energy transfers
  • ballistic lunar capture
  • lunar landing guidance
  • deep-space navigation
  • lunar constellations
  • Lunar Gateway
  • libration point orbits
  • AI for GNC applications

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

22 pages, 13396 KiB  
Article
Low-Thrust Nonlinear Orbit Control for Very Low Lunar Orbits
by Edoardo Maria Leonardi, Mauro Pontani, Stefano Carletta and Paolo Teofilatto
Appl. Sci. 2024, 14(5), 1924; https://doi.org/10.3390/app14051924 - 26 Feb 2024
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 802
Abstract
In the next decades, both space agencies and private competitors are targeting the lunar environment as a scientific and technological resource for future space missions. In particular, the confirmed existence of water-ice deposits in the vicinity of the poles (predominantly the south pole) [...] Read more.
In the next decades, both space agencies and private competitors are targeting the lunar environment as a scientific and technological resource for future space missions. In particular, the confirmed existence of water-ice deposits in the vicinity of the poles (predominantly the south pole) makes polar or near-polar low lunar orbits attractive for the purpose of designing space missions that could search for suitable Lunar base sites. However, traveling very-low-altitude orbits is very challenging, as they are strongly perturbed by the Moon’s gravity field as well as third- and fourth-body effects due to the Earth and the Sun. Several studies demonstrate that these orbits are expected to impact the lunar surface in a few months. Therefore, the definition and implementation of an effective station-keeping strategy represents a crucial issue in order to extend satellites’ lifetime. In this paper, a feedback nonlinear control law is employed in order to perform corrective maneuvers aimed at keeping the state of the satellite within acceptable margins. The satellite is assumed to be equipped with a steerable and throttleable low-thrust propulsion system. The control law is based on the Lyapunov stability theory and does not require any reference path to track, with a considerable decrease in the computational cost. The proposed real-time control law includes control saturation, related to the maximum available thrust magnitude, and is developed employing modified equinoctial elements, in order to avoid singularities and extend its range of application. Finally, the strategy at hand is tested in the presence of all the relevant perturbations (i.e., harmonics of the selenopotential, third- and fourth-body effects) in order to show its effectiveness and efficiency. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Schemes for Lunar Transfer, Descent and Landing)
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24 pages, 3383 KiB  
Article
Geometric Analysis of Sun-Assisted Lunar Transfer Trajectories in the Planar Bicircular Four-Body Model
by Anastasia Tselousova, Sergey Trofimov, Maksim Shirobokov and Mikhail Ovchinnikov
Appl. Sci. 2023, 13(8), 4676; https://doi.org/10.3390/app13084676 - 7 Apr 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1307
Abstract
This research presents a geometric analysis of Sun-assisted low-energy lunar transfers and several convenient tools that enable the systematic trajectory design in the framework of the planar bicircular restricted four-body problem. By analogy with the patched conic approximation approach for high-energy transfers, a [...] Read more.
This research presents a geometric analysis of Sun-assisted low-energy lunar transfers and several convenient tools that enable the systematic trajectory design in the framework of the planar bicircular restricted four-body problem. By analogy with the patched conic approximation approach for high-energy transfers, a Sun-assisted low-energy trajectory is divided into three legs. Two interior legs, departing and arriving, are located inside the Earth–Moon region of prevalence and designed in the Earth–Moon circular restricted three-body problem, whereas the exterior leg lies outside the region of prevalence and is calculated in the Earth–Moon–Sun bicircular restricted four-body model. The whole trajectory is obtained by smoothly patching the three legs on the boundary of the region of prevalence. The arrival conditions are met by targeting a specific point in the L2 lunar gateway. The interior legs are easily adjustable to the four-body dynamics. The database of planar lunar transfer trajectories can be used to select an initial guess for the multiple-shooting procedure of designing a three-dimensional Sun-assisted lunar transfer in high-fidelity dynamical models. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Schemes for Lunar Transfer, Descent and Landing)
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29 pages, 10962 KiB  
Article
Design of a Low-Energy Earth-Moon Flight Trajectory Using a Planar Auxiliary Problem
by Ilya Nikolichev and Vladimir Sesyukalov
Appl. Sci. 2023, 13(3), 1967; https://doi.org/10.3390/app13031967 - 2 Feb 2023
Viewed by 1312
Abstract
The paper presents a sufficiently simple technique for designing a low-energy flight trajectory of a spacecraft (SC) from the Earth to the Moon with insertion into a low circular orbit of the latter. The proposed technique is based on the solution and subsequent [...] Read more.
The paper presents a sufficiently simple technique for designing a low-energy flight trajectory of a spacecraft (SC) from the Earth to the Moon with insertion into a low circular orbit of the latter. The proposed technique is based on the solution and subsequent analysis of a special model problem, which is a variant of the restricted circular four-body problem (RC4BP) Earth-Sun-SC-Moon; for which it is assumed that the planes of the orbits of all considered bodies coincides. The planar motion of the center of mass of the SC relative to the Earth is considered as perturbed (Sun, Moon). To describe it, equations in osculating elements are used, obtained by using the method of variation of constants based on the analytical solution of the planar circular restricted problem of two bodies (RC2BP)—Earth-SC, for which the rotation of the main axes of the coordinate system (the main plane) is synchronized with the motion of the Sun. The trajectory problem of designing a SC flight from a low circular near-Earth orbit to a low circular selenocentric one (“full” motion model—a restricted four-body problem (R4BP), an ephemeris model) is considered as an optimization one in the impulse formulation. The solution of the main problem is carried out in few (three) stages, on each the appropriate solution of the current variant of the auxiliary problem is determined, which is subsequently used as the basis of the initial approximation to the main one. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Schemes for Lunar Transfer, Descent and Landing)
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