Continuation and stationkeeping analyses on planar retrograde periodic orbits around the Earth

While prograde orbits around the Earth including libration point orbits and resonant orbits have been extensively investigated in the Earth-Moon system, retrograde orbits may offer unique characteristics potentially useful for future missions. Periodic orbits and associated dynamical structures in the Earth-Moon circular restricted three-body problem often well approximate the actual dynamics, but the solar gravity can have a substantial impact on long-term behavior of spacecraft. The first part of the present paper incorporates solar gravitational perturbations into lunar resonant retrograde periodic orbits around the Earth. The continuation procedure based on the symmetry of the bicircular restricted four-body problem generates synodic resonant, multi-revolutional periodic orbits. Stable and unstable manifolds associated with the converged orbits exhibit homoclinic behavior inducing excursions in the Jacobi energy peculiar to the non-autonomous nature of the model. The second part assesses stationkeeping costs for maintaining the retrograde periodic orbits. Monte Carlo simulations indicate a long-term feasibility of maintaining the retrograde periodic orbits with modest Delta v. The result in the present paper supports our recent proposal of using the retrograde periodic orbit as a novel staging orbit connecting the Earth and interplanetary space. (C) 2021 COSPAR. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.