LIBRATION POINT ORBITS CHARACTERIZATION IN THE EARTH-MOON SYSTEM FOR SCIENTIFIC APPLICATIONS

Recently, a new effort has been reserved to explore the lunar environment with missions aimed at orbiting the Moon and collecting great amounts of data in view of a future human installation. In this context, several authors proposed the exploitation of periodic orbits around the equilibrium point L-1 in the Earth-Moon system with different objectives. The purpose of this study is to provide effective criteria that can be applied to choose a nominal orbit operable to these ends. We consider as key parameters lunar surface coverage, solar eclipses and orbit maintenance costs. We analyze a set of periodic and quasi-periodic orbits at different energy levels and we provide parametric analyses that can be used to identify a specific orbit according to the mission constraints.