A12


Phasing Trajectories for a CubeSat Lunar Far-side Positioning Mission

Hongru Chen, Yazhe Meng, Jian Ma (CSU, CAS)


To advance future lunar exploration, a CubeSat mission is proposed. The mission is to deploy four 6U CubeSats along an Earth-Moon L2 halo orbit to provide positioning service for landers on the far side of the lunar surface. The best configuration is that four satellites are separated evenly (i.e. 90 deg. from the neighboring satellite) along the halo orbit. This paper is about designing the phasing trajectories for a halo orbit. It is shown that applying the symmetry of the three-body problem where lunar gravity is utilized lead to acceptably low Ģv for different phase differences. It is concluded that a Ģv of 100 m/s is required to distribute the CubeSats evenly. The optimization of continuous-thrust trajectory reveals that a modern micro propulsion system for CubeSats is applicable for this requirement.