Perturbed Periodic Orbits as Landing Solutions with an Abort Option at Europa

Moons of the outer planets harbor great treasures of science, but landing on these bodies to study them up-close is a very difficult task. Two characteristics of an approach-trajectory that would help enable such a mission are: (1) the spacecraft can observe its target site prior to landing, and (2) the spacecraft can abort the landing in the event of a problem and easily come back later. Each of these requirements relies on repeatability in the multi-body problem, which is non-trivial to achieve. In the current work, stable and nearly-stable periodic orbits about Europa which offer solutions to the problem of repeatability for landing are studied. 17 total solutions are identified in a perturbed three-body problem which accounts for J(2) and C-22 of Europa.