SUN-PERTURBED EARTH-TO-MOON TRANSFERS WITH LOW

ENERGY AND MODERATE FLIGHT TIME

KAZUYUKI YAGASAKI
Department of Mechanical and Systems Engineering, Gifu University, Gifu, Gifu 501-1193,
Japan, e-mail: yagasaki@cc.gifu-u.ac.jp

(Received: 7 April 2003; revised: 5 April 2003; accepted: 11 May 2004)

Abstract. We construct a spacecraft transfer with low cost and moderate flight time from the
Earth to the Moon. The motion of the spacecraft is modeled by the planar circular restricted
three-body problem including a perturbation due to the solar gravitation. Our approach is to
reduce computation of optimal transfers to a non-linear boundary value problem. Using a
computer software called AUTO, we solve it and continue its solutions numerically to obtain the
optimal transfers. Our result also shows that the use of the solar gravitation can further lower
the transfer cost drastically.

Key words: Earth-to-Moon transfer, perturbed three-body problem, non-linear boundary

value problem, numerical continuation, stable and unstable manifolds, chaos, space mission
design

1. Introduction

The traditional approach to transfer a spacecraft from the Earth to the Moon
is by the well known Hohmann transfer (e.g., Szebehely and Mark, 1998).
For its construction, only two-body dynamics for the Earth and spacecraft is
used, and a Keplerian semi-ellipse connecting the Earth parking orbit with
the Moon parking orbit is determined. The cost of such transfers is generally
high and some attempts have been made to obtain lower cost transfers.
A more realistic model of the spacecraft is presented by the so-called
planar circular restricted three-body problem (PCR3BP) (Szebehely, 1967;
Szebehely and Mark, 1998). The two main bodies, the Earth and Moon,
rotate in circles of a plane about their common center and the third body, the
spacecraft, moves in the plane under gravitational force from the Earth and
Moon. This model has been proven to exhibit very complicated dynamics
and to have a variety of trajectories including periodic, quasiperiodic and
chaotic ones (see Koon et al., 2000a and references therein). Such a property
was used to propose new Earth-to-Moon transfers in Belbruno (1987),
Belbruno and Miller (1993), Bollt and Meiss (1995), Schroer and Ott (1997),
Belbruno and Carrico (2000), Bello Mora et al. (2000), Koon et al. (2000b,
2001), Ott (1997) and Yagasaki (2004). The possibility of low energy transfers

Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy 90: 197–212, 2004.

Ó 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
198 KAZUYUKI YAGASAKI

associated with chaotic dynamics of the PCR3BP was first discussed in

Belbruno (1994).
Among them, Belbruno (1987) and Belbruno and Miller (1993) invented a
new method to design low energy Earth-to-Moon transfers using the weak
stability boundary (WSB). Roughly speaking, the WSB determines a transi-
tion region between the gravitational capture and escape from the Moon in
the phase space. A WSB transfer enters it and is automatically captured by
the Moon without braking. This capture is ballistic (see Belbruno (2002) and
references therein for more details on this technique). Belbruno and Miller
(1993) estimated the necessary velocity change DV to be lowered by about
18% from the Hohmann type transfer’s near the Moon, but its flight time to
be about 120 days. Recently, it was announced in Belbruno and Carrico
(2000) that the performance of this type transfer can be improved so that the
decrease of DV from the Hohmann type transfer’s becomes 25% and its flight
time is about 90 days. Bello Mora et al. (2000) also gave numerical examples
to compare WSB transfers with different type transfers performing ballistic
captures and having lower flight time. Koon et al. (2000b, 2001) treated two
coupled PCR3BPs of the Sun–Earth and Earth–Moon systems, and repro-
duced such a low energy transfer. These results also show that the solar
gravitation can be used to lower the transfer cost.
On the other hand, Yagasaki (2004) used the simple PCR3BP of the
Earth–Moon system and found transfers with 4.1–7.5% lower cost and 0.92–
8.2 times flight time (110 h—41 days), as well as one with the same cost but
22% shorter flight time, compared to the Hohmann type transfer. He reduced
computation of optimal transfers to a non-linear boundary value problem
(BVP) and solved it and continue its solutions numerically to obtain the
optimal transfers. Elliptic trajectories similar to the Hohmann transfer were
chosen as the starting solution when the Moon mass was assumed to be zero,
and numerical solutions of the BVP were computed successively while the
Moon mass was increased till it became the real value or the flight time was
changed after that. To this end, a computer software called AUTO (Doedel et
al., 1997), which was developed for numerical continuation and bifurcation
analysis of differential equations, was used there.
In this paper we take into account the influence of the Sun and extend the
approach of Yagasaki (2004) to obtain a more efficient Earth-to-Moon
transfer trajectory. We show that the use of the solar gravitation further
lowers the transfer cost drastically as in Belbruno and Miller (1993) and
Koon et al. (2000b, 2001). In our concrete example, a spacecraft is assumed
to transfer from a 167 km altitude Earth parking orbit to a 100 km altitude
Moon parking orbit, as in Belbruno and Miller (1993). Elliptic trajectories
are also taken as the starting solution and the computer software AUTO is
used. Especially, DV can be lowered even up to 15% from the traditional
 SUN-PERTURBED EARTH-TO-MOON TRANSFERS 199

Hohmann type transfer’s but the flight time is moderate (43 days at most).
Here we adopt a co-circular, co-planar restricted four-body problem as our
model of spacecrafts (see Section 2). It may be too simple, compared to the
actual situation, but it would be sufficient in the first stage to demonstrate the
usefulness and effectiveness of our approach.
The outline of this paper is as follows. In Section 2 we describe our model
of the spacecraft motion, the Sun-perturbed PCR3BP. In Section 3, based on
the idea of the Hohmann transfer, we construct an Earth-to-Moon transfer
trajectory. We describe a non-linear BVP to obtain the optimal transfers in
Section 4 and present numerical computation results by AUTO in Section 5.
The dynamics of the PCR3BP relating to the obtained low energy transfers
and their stability are discussed in Sections 6 and 7, respectively. Finally we
give a summary and some comments in Section 8.

2. Perturbed Planar Circular Restricted Three-Body Problem

We first ignore an influence of the Sun and assume that the Earth and Moon
rotate counterclockwise in circles of a plane about their common center of
mass. This assumption gives a good approximation since the Moon’s
eccentricity is about 0.055. The rotational angular speed is estimated as
2:665
106 rad/s. Here we took 6378 and 1738 km, respectively, as the
masses of the Earth and Moon, and 6:672
1011 m3 =kg s2 and 384,400 km,
respectively, as the gravitational constant and the distance between the Earth
and Moon. We adopt 6378 and 1738 km as the radii of the Earth and the
Moon, respectively. See, e.g., Appendix II of Szebehely and Mark, (1998) for
related physical constants. The spacecraft has an infinitesimal mass and
moves in the plane under gravitational force from the Earth and Moon.
We use dimensionless time and space variables such that the total
mass, gravitational constant and the distance between the Earth and Moon
are all the unity. The unit time and length are about 375,200 s (i.e., 104.2 h)
and 384,400 km, respectively, and the masses of the Earth and Moon are
denoted by mE ¼ 1  l and mM ¼ l, respectively, where l ¼ 7:3483

1022 =ð5:9742
1024 þ 7:3483
1022 Þ  0:01215. Choose a rotating coordi-
nate system such that the origin is at the center of mass and the Earth and
Moon are on the x-axis at the points ðl; 0Þ and ð1  l; 0Þ, respectively. (see
Figure 1).
Let ðx; yÞ be the position of the spacecraft in the plane. The equations of
motion are given by
@ @
x€  2y_ ¼ X0 ðx; yÞ; y€ þ 2x_ ¼ X0 ðx; yÞ; ð1Þ
@x @y
200 KAZUYUKI YAGASAKI

y
S
Sun’s orbit
ρ

θ
E M
x
−µ 1−µ

Earth’s orbit
Moon’s orbit

Figure 1. Rotating coordinate system. The positions of the Earth (E), Moon (M) and Sun (S)
are depicted. The short-dashed circles represent the Earth’s and Moon’s orbits in the non-
rotating coordinate system, and long-dashed circle represents the Sun’s orbit in the rotating
coordinate system.

where
1 1l l
X0 ðx; yÞ ¼ ðx2 þ y2 Þ þ þ
2 rE rM
with
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
rE ¼ ðx þ lÞ2 þ y2 ; rM ¼ ðx  1 þ lÞ2 þ y2 ;
e.g., Szebehely (1967) for the derivation of (1). The quantity
1
E ¼ ðx_ 2 þ y_2 Þ  X0 ðx; yÞ ð2Þ
2
is a constant of the motion in (1).
Now we take into account the influence of the Sun. We assume that the
Sun does not move in the absolute coordinate system and rotates counter-
clockwise in a circle of the plane about the origin in the rotating coordinate
system. These assumptions also give a good approximation since the Sun’s
mass, 1:9891
1030 kg, which corresponds to mS ¼ 3:289
105 in our
dimensionless unit, is very large, the Earth’s eccentricity is about 0.017 and
the Moon’s orbit is inclined to the Earth’s by about 5°. The distance between
the Sun and Earth is 1:496
108 km, which corresponds to q ¼ 389:2 in the
dimensionless unit. The angular velocity of the Sun is calculated as
1:991
107 rad/s, corresponding to xS ¼ 0:9253 in the rotating dimen-
sionless coordinate system. Let h be the inclination of the direction to the Sun
from the x-axis, so that the position of the Sun is given by ðq cos h; q sin hÞ
(see Figure 1). Equation (1) is modified as
 SUN-PERTURBED EARTH-TO-MOON TRANSFERS 201

@ @
x€  2y_ ¼ X0 ðx; yÞ þ X1 ðx; y; hÞ;
@x @x
@ @
y€ þ 2x_ ¼ X0 ðx; yÞ þ X1 ðx; y; hÞ;
@y @y
_h ¼ xS ; ð3Þ
where
mS mS
X1 ðx; yÞ ¼  2 ðx cos h þ y sin hÞ;
rS q
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
rS ¼ ðx  q cos hÞ2 þ ðy  q sin hÞ2 :
The second term of the potential X1 is due to the fact that the origin of the
rotating coordinate system rotates in the absolute coordinate system. There is
no conserved energy for (3) unlike (1).

3. Earth-to-Moon Transfers

We construct a transfer trajectory of the spacecraft from a circle parking

orbit of the Earth to a circle parking orbit of the Moon, as in Yagasaki (2004)
(see the reference for the details).
First, the spacecraft on the Earth parking orbit of a radius rs is injected so
that its velocity is increased by Dvs . (see Figure 2(a)). Then we can eliminate
an influence of the Sun and Moon since the spacecraft is very close to the
Earth. Let ðxs ; ys Þ be the injection point in the rotating coordinate system,
and let ðx_ s ; y_s Þ be the velocity after the injection. Denote by ðxE ; yE Þ and
ðx_ E ; y_E Þ, respectively, the corresponding position and velocity in the non-
rotating coordinate system whose origin is set at the center of the Earth (see
Figure 3). Since the angular velocity of the ðx; yÞ-coordinate system is 1, we
have
xs ¼ xE  l; ys ¼ yE ; x_ s ¼ x_ E þ yE ; y_s ¼ y_E  xE ð4Þ
when the xE - and yE -axes coincide with x- and y-axes, respectively.

(a) (b)

E
rs r0 ∆v0
re M
∆ve
∆vs
Figure 2. Earth-to-Moon transfer trajectory: (a) an injection Dvs on the Earth parking orbit;
(b) two injections Dv0 and Dve near the Moon.
202 KAZUYUKI YAGASAKI

y y’
yM

yE x
xM
O M
x’
xE
E

Figure 3. Coordinate systems O–xy, O–x0 y0 , E–xE yE and M–xM yM . The origins of the O–x0 y0 ,
E–xE yE and M–xM yM coordinate systems are fixed at the common center of mass, Earth and
Moon, respectively, while the directions of the coordinate axes are unchanged.

Suppose that the trajectory arrives near the Moon. Let ðx0 ; y0 Þ and ðx_ 0 ; y_0 Þ
be, respectively, the position and velocity at the arriving point in the rotating
coordinate system. Denote by ðxM ; yM Þ and ðx_ M ; y_M Þ, respectively, the cor-
responding position and velocity in the non-rotating coordinate system in
which the origin is set at the center of the Moon. We have
xM ¼ x0  ð1  lÞ; yM ¼ y0 ;
ð5Þ
x_ M ¼ x_ 0  y0 ; y_M ¼ y_0 þ x0  ð1  lÞ
when the xM - and yM -axes coincide with x- and y-axes, respectively.
Let r0 be the minimum distance between the spacecraft trajectory and
Moon (see Figure 2(b)). To settle the spacecraft into the circular Moon
parking orbit of a radius re , we use an elliptic orbit as in the Hohmann
transfer. Its velocity is first decreased by
sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
2lre
Dv0 ¼ v0 
r0 ðr0 þ re Þ
to inject it into an elliptic orbit, and then by
sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi rffiffiffiffi
2lr0 l
Dve ¼ 
re ðr0 þ re Þ re
to inject it into the circular orbit of the radius re (see Figure 2(b)). Here we
considered only an influence of the Moon. The total velocity change to
transfer from the Earth parking orbit to the Moon parking orbit is
Dv ¼ jDvs j þ jDv0 j þ jDve j.
It was shown in Yagasaki (2004) that when the first injection Dvs and the
starting and arriving parking orbits are fixed, the total velocity change Dv
becomes minimum at r0 ¼ re . So we search a trajectory of (3) such as (i) it
starts on the Earth parking orbit of the radius rs and arrives on the Moon
 SUN-PERTURBED EARTH-TO-MOON TRANSFERS 203

parking orbit of the radius re ; (ii) its velocities at the starting and arriving
points are tangent to the circular orbits in the non-rotating coordinate sys-
tems fixed at the Earth and Moon, respectively; and (iii) Dv is as small as
possible. We can also show that if the spacecraft is governed not by (3) but by
(1), then the minimum total velocity change Dv and final injection D0 near the
Moon (note that Dve ¼ 0) approximately depend only on the energy of the
trajectory, E, and are greater than 3.631 and 0.607, respectively. (see Section
3 of Yagasaki (2004) for the details).

4. Non-linear Boundary Value Problem for Low Energy Transfers

We present a non-linear BVP to compute the optimal Earth-to-Moon

transfers.
Let T be (dimensionless) time spent by the trajectory from the starting
point to the arriving point. Since the starting and arriving points have dis-
tances of rs and re from the centers of the Earth and Moon, respectively, we
have
ðxð0Þ þ lÞ2 þ ðyð0ÞÞ2 ¼ r2s ;
ð6Þ
ðxðTÞ  1 þ lÞ2 þ ðyðTÞÞ2 ¼ r2e :
The velocities at the starting and arriving points in the E–xE yE and M–xM yM
coordinate systems must be perpendicular to the position vectors from the
centers of the Earth and Moon, respectively, so that
ðxð0Þ þ lÞðxð0Þ
_  yð0ÞÞ þ yð0Þðyð0Þ
_ þ xð0Þ þ lÞ ¼ 0;
ð7Þ
ðxðTÞ  1 þ lÞðxðTÞ
_  yðTÞÞ þ yðTÞðyðTÞ
_ þ xðTÞ  1 þ lÞ ¼ 0:
See Equations (4) and (5). The velocity change for the Earth-to-Moon
transfer trajectory is computed by
Dv ¼ Dvs þ Dve ; ð8Þ
where
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi rffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
1l
Dvs ¼ ðxð0Þ
_  yð0ÞÞ2 þ ðyð0Þ _ þ xð0Þ þ lÞ2 
rs
and
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi rffiffiffiffi
l
Dve ¼ ðxðTÞ
_  yðTÞÞ2 þ ðyðTÞ _ þ xðTÞ  1 þ lÞ2  :
re
Equations (3), (6) and (7) provide a non-linear boundary value problem to
obtain optimal transfers. Note that the boundary conditions (6) and (7) are
the same as in the unperturbed case (i.e., mS ¼ 0) of Yagasaki (2004).
204 KAZUYUKI YAGASAKI

Solutions of the non-linear BVP satisfy conditions (i) and (ii) in Section 3.
So we numerically solve the non-linear BVP and search a trajectory such that
Dv is as small as possible. To this end the computer software AUTO (Doedel
et al., 1997) can be used and was actually done to obtain the numerical results
of the next section. The same approach was used for mS ¼ 0 in K. Yagasaki
(2004).

5. Numerical Example

We give a numerical example for rs ¼ 0:01703 and re ¼ 0:004781, which

correspond to the 167 km altitude Earth parking orbit and 100 km altitude
Moon parking orbit, respectively. For the Hohmann transfer we compute
Dvs  3:065 as the initial injection (Yagasaki, 2004).
Figure 4 shows the computation results by AUTO. Here h0 ¼ hð0Þ is the
initial direction to the Sun. To obtain these results, we first took as the
starting solutions elliptic trajectories similar to the Hohmann transfer with
mS ¼ 0 satisfying the boundary conditions (6) and (7), and continued them to
mS ¼ 3:289
105 . They were computed by continuation of n rounds and a
half of an elliptic orbit (connecting the Earth and Moon parking orbits) with
n ¼ 0; 1; 2 from l ¼ 0 to 0.01215, as in Yagasaki (2004). The computed
trajectories were then continued with Dv and h0 for T fixed to obtain Figure
4(a). Finally, the two minima of Dv for each n in Figure 4(a) were continued
with T and h0 to obtain Figure 4(b), which should be compared with Figure
7(b) of Yagasaki (2004) to see how the solar gravitation influences on Earth-
to-Moon transfer performance. The curves obtained from the two minima
are almost the same and the difference between them is almost invisible.

3.9
10
(a) (b)
n=0 8
n=2

6 n=2
∆v

3.85
n=1
4
n=1
2
n=0
3.8 0
-1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 3.6 3.8 4 4.2 4.4
θ0 /π ∆v
Figure 4. Numerical computation results by AUTO for the non-linear BVP, (3), (6) and (7):
(a) Continuation of three solutions with Dv and h0 ¼ 0 for T fixed; (b) continuation of the
minima of Dv in (a) with T and h0 . The value of n represents the revolution number of the
starting solutions around the Earth (see the text).
 SUN-PERTURBED EARTH-TO-MOON TRANSFERS 205

In Figure 4(b) we see that the velocity change Dv has some minima for
each n. Transfer trajectories computed at these minima of Dv are shown in
Figure 5 and their performance is provided in Table I. For comparison, the
performance of the corresponding low energy transfers obtained for mS ¼ 0
in Yagasaki (2004) is given in Table I. These trajectories are also redrawn in
the geocentric inertial frame in Figure 6. We note that there is another
transfer trajectory with almost the same but a little higher energy and with a
different value of h0 for each one in Figure 5. The capture of these transfers
by the Moon is not ballistic since they cannot remain near the Moon without
braking.

(a) 2 (b) 1 (c)

0.5

1 0.5

0 0 0
y

-1
y
-0.5
-0.5
-2 -1

0 0.5 1 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1

x x x

1
(d) (e) 1 (f)
1
0.5
0

0 0
y

y
y

-1
-0.5
-1
-1
-2
-1 0 1 -1 0 1 2 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1
x x x

1 (g) 1 (h)

0.5 0.5

0
y

0
y

-0.5 -0.5

-1 -1

-1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1

x x
Figure 5. Low energy Earth-to-Moon transfer trajectories computed by AUTO: (a)
Dv ¼ 3:855, T ¼ 1:058; (b) Dv ¼ 3:763, T ¼ 9:993; (c) Dv ¼ 3:847, T ¼ 3:32; (d) Dv ¼ 3:883,
T ¼ 7:404. (e) Dv ¼ 3:818, T ¼ 8:277; (f) Dv ¼ 3:848, T ¼ 5:579; (g) Dv ¼ 3:848, T ¼ 7:105; (h)
Dv ¼ 3:808, T ¼ 7:353. The circles represent the positions of the Earth and Moon.
206 KAZUYUKI YAGASAKI

TABLE I
Performance of the low energy Earth-to-Moon transfers for mS ¼ 3:289
105

Dv Dvs Dv0 T h0 =p Figure 5

3.855 (3.857) 3.063 (3.063) 0.792 (0.794) 1.058 (1.052) 0.5309 (a)
3.763 (3.85) 3.062 (3.062) 0.701 (0.788) 9.993 (9.511) 0.8197 (b)
3.847 (3.853) 3.062 (3.062) 0.785 (0.79) 3.32 (3.297) )0.7343 (c)
3.883 (3.847) 3.061 (3.061) 0.822 (0.786) 7.404 (7.269) )0.7923 (d)
3.818 (3.843) 3.061 (3.061) 0.757 (0.782) 8.277 (8.201) 0.6011 (e)
3.848 (3.857) 3.063 (3.063) 0.784 (0.794) 5.579 (5.526) )0.0358 (f)
3.848 (3.831) 3.058 (3.058) 0.79 (0.772) 7.105 (7.076) )0.9918 (g)
3.808 (3.823) 3.057 (3.057) 0.751 (0.766) 7.353 (7.347) 0.4724 (h)

Performance of the corresponding transfers computed for mS = 0 in Yagasaki (2004) is given

in the parentheses.

The shape of transfer trajectories are very similar to those obtained for
mS ¼ 0 in Yagasaki (2004) (see Figure 8 there) but their performance are
improved except two of Figure 5(d) and (g) especially for long time trajec-
tories. We also see that all the transfers of Figure 5 have almost the same
initial injection vs as the corresponding ones of mS ¼ 0 and especially the
transfer of Figure 5(a), which does not travel far from the Earth and Moon,
has even almost the same performance.
We remark that a traditional Hohmann type transfer needs one more
injection near the Moon (cf. Section 3). Such a revision is computed, for
example, by the patched conic method (Brown, 1998), for preliminary design
and by a numerical approach for an accurate estimate. Its total injection near
the Moon was estimated as about 0.828 (i.e., 0.848 km/s) in Belbruno and

2
(a) (b) 1 (c)
2

1
1
0
y

y
y

0
0

-1 -1 -1

-2 -1 0 1 -1 0 1 -1 0 1
x x x
Figure 6. Low energy Earth-to-Moon transfer trajectories in the geocentric inertial frame: (a)
n ¼ 0; (b) n ¼ 1; (c) n ¼ 2. The dotted curves are the transfer trajectories of Figure 5(a), (c) and
(f) in (a), (b) and (c) of this figure, the broken curves are ones of Figure 5(d) and (g), and the
solid curves are ones of Figure 5(b), (e) and (h). The small circle represents the position of the
Earth and the dash-dotted large circle the Moon’s orbit. The Moon is assumed to be in the x-
direction when the spacecraft is injected on the Earth parking orbit.
 SUN-PERTURBED EARTH-TO-MOON TRANSFERS 207

Miller (1993). So the necessary on-board fuel for the obtained transfers in
Figure 5 is lowered up to 15.3% from the traditional Hohmann type trans-
fer’s although their flight time is not so long and T ¼ 9:993 (about 43 days) at
most. In addition, the flight time for one in Figure 5(a) is 8% shorter than the
Hohmann transfer’s, which was estimated as T ¼ 1:146 in Yagasaki (2004),
and its total injection is still 1% lower than the Hohmann type transfer’s.
Moreover, the initial injections are less than the Hohmann transfer’s
(Dvs ¼ 3:065), unlike typical WSB transfers (Belbruno and Miller, 1993; Bello
Mora et al., 2000).

6. Dynamics of the PCR3BP Relating to the Low Energy Transfers

In Yagasaki (2004) a question of what dynamics relates to similar lower

energy Earth-to-Moon transfers in the PCR3BP (i.e., for mS ¼ 0) was dis-
cussed. Here we choose the transfer of Figure 5(b) as a typical one and
outline the discussion of that paper using the related, unperturbed transfer.
We first note that the PCR3BP (1) has five equilibria called the Lagrange
points and usually denoted by Li , i ¼ 1; . . . ; 5. The first three of them are
collinear and on the x-axis: The point L1 is between the Earth and Moon
while L2 and L3 are behind the Moon and Earth, respectively. In addition,
there exist a family of unstable periodic orbits around the three Lagrange
points. (see Szebehely 1967; Koon et al., 2000a). Numerical computations of
the periodic orbits emanating from L1 by AUTO were also given in Doedel
et al. (2003). The periodic orbits have stable and unstable manifolds and their
transverse intersection yields chaotic dynamics (Wiggins, 1990; Alligood
et al., 1996).
Figure 7 shows numerically computed stable and unstable manifolds of a
periodic orbit around L1 on the Poincar
e section R ¼ fðx; x; _ 2
_ y; yÞ
R4 jy ¼ 0; y_ > 0g in an energy level set of E ¼ 1:191, which is almost the
same as that of the unperturbed transfer, in the PCR3BP. Here a computer
software called Dynamics (Nusse and Yorke, 1997) was used with the assis-
tance of a differential equation solver called DOP853 (Hairer et al., 1993),
which is based on the explicit Runge–Kutta method of order 8 (Dormand
and Prince, 1989) and has a fifth order error estimator with third order
correction and a dense output of order 7. A tolerance of 1010 was also
chosen in our computation. To obtain a point at which a computed trajectory
intersects the Poincar
e section, an interval ½tk1 ; tk  of numerical integration
such that yðtk1 Þ < 0 and yðtk Þ  0 was searched and the method of bisection
was used for the interval with an error of 1010 . See K. Yagasaki (in prep-
aration) for more details on the incorporation of DOP853 in Dynamics. The
periodic orbit was numerically computed by AUTO as in Doedel et al. (2003).
208 KAZUYUKI YAGASAKI

Figure 7. Numerically computed stable and unstable manifolds of a periodic orbit around the
Lagrange point L1 in the PCR3BP (1) with E ¼ 1:191. The stable and unstable manifolds on
the Poincar
e section R are drawn as solid curves. The black circle represents the position of the
periodic orbit and the white circles the positions of the Earth and Moon. At the black crosses
connected by straight lines with arrows the Earth-to-Moon transfer having almost the same
energy starts near the Earth or passes the section.

The initial conditions of the unperturbed transfer and the points at which it
passes the Poincar
e section are also plotted in the figure.
As shown in Figure 7, the unperturbed transfer passes near the left branch
of the stable manifolds of the periodic orbits. This is the case for the other
unperturbed low energy transfers corresponding to those of Figure 5 (cf.
Figure 11 of Yagasaki, 2004). The situation is also very similar to that of
WSB transfers: They pass near the right branch of the stable manifold and
approach the Moon (Belbruno, 2002). Thus, the unperturbed low energy
transfers approach the Moon along the stable manifolds directly like WSB
transfers or along the unstable manifolds after they pass near the periodic
orbits.

7. Stability of the Low Energy Transfers

The standard terminology of stability is utilized for trajectories defined on

infinite-time intervals (e.g., Wiggins, 1990). To characterize such trajectories,
the Lyapunov exponents are also often used (e.g., Alligood et al., 1996).
These concepts can be easily extended to trajectories defined on finite-time
intervals (Yagasaki, 2004). In the following, we briefly explain the extended
concepts and use them to describe further properties of the low energy Earth-
to-Moon transfers obtained in Section 5.
 SUN-PERTURBED EARTH-TO-MOON TRANSFERS 209

Consider general, nonautonomous vector fields of the form

n_ ¼ fðn; tÞ; n 2 Rn ; t 2 ½t ; tþ ; ð9Þ
where f is Cr (rP1) in n and continuous in t and t < 0 < tþ . Denote by
/ðn0 ; t; t0 Þ the flow generated by (9). So n ¼ /ðn0 ; t; t0 Þ gives the solution of
(9) satisfying nðt0 Þ ¼ n0 . Let cðtÞ be a trajectory in (9). Define a Cr diffeo-
morphism by
wðnÞ ¼ /ðn þ cðt Þ; tþ ; t Þ  cðtþ Þ:
We refer to wðÞ as the Poincar
e-type map. Obviously, the origin n ¼ 0 is
always a fixed point of the Poincar
e-type map.
We say that the trajectory cðtÞ is finite-time stable on the interval ½t ; tþ  if
there exist a neighborhood U of n ¼ 0 and a norm k  k on Rn such that
kwðnÞk  knk for all n 2 U. It is also said to be finite-time unstable if it is not
finite-time stable. If all eigenvalues of the Jacobian matrix Dn wð0Þ have
moduli less than 1, then the trajectory cðtÞ is finite-time stable. If an eigen-
value of the Jacobian matrix Dn wð0Þ has a modulus greater than 1 then the
trajectory cðtÞ is finite-time unstable. Roughly speaking, trajectories near it
approach cðtÞ on the finite-time interval if it is finite-time stable, and they go
away from it if it is finite-time unstable.
Let kj , j ¼ 1; . . . ; n, be the eigenvalues of Dn wð0Þ such that jk1 jO    Ojkn j.
We call the number
1
mj ¼ log jkj j
tþ  t
the jth finite-time Lyapunov exponent on the interval ½t ; tþ , where the mul-
tiplicity is taken into account. If the maximum finite-time Lyapunov expo-
nent, mmax ¼ maxj¼1;...;n mj , is negative, then cðtÞ is finite-time stable.
Conversely, if the trajectory cðtÞ is finite-time stable, then mmax is non-posi-
tive. Let UðtÞ be the fundamental matrix of the linearized system for (9)
around n ¼ cðtÞ,
g_ ¼ Dn fðcðtÞ; tÞg; g 2 Rn ; ð10Þ
such that Uðt Þ ¼ I, where I is the n
n unit matrix. The Jacobian matrix of
the Poincar
e-type map is computed as Dn wð0Þ ¼ Uðtþ Þ. See Yagasaki (2004)
for more details on finite-time stability and Lyapunov exponents.
Finite-time Lyapunov exponents for the transfer trajectories of Figure 5
were computed and are given in Table II. Note that the sum of all finite-time
Lyapunov exponents becomes zero since the flow generated by (3) is area-
preserving. All the transfers have two positive finite-time Lyapunov expo-
nents, so that they are finite-time unstable. It may be a surprise that even the
nearest lower energy transfers of Figures 5(a), (c) and (f) from the starting
elliptic ones, which are stable elliptic orbits of the Kepler problem, are finite-
time unstable. Actually the shapes of the transfers in the inertial frame are
210 KAZUYUKI YAGASAKI

TABLE II
Finite-time Lyapunov exponents of the low energy Earth-to-Moon transfers given in Figure 5

n c1 c2 c3 c4 Figure 5

0 8.441 3.777 )3.777 )8.441 (a)

1.454 0.537 )0.537 )1.454 (b)
1 3.102 1.185 )1.185 )3.102 (c)
1.759 0.518 )0.518 )1.759 (d)
1.383 0.692 )0.692 )1.383 (e)
2 1.987 0.682 )0.682 )1.987 (f)
1.699 0.556 )0.556 )1.699 (g)
1.497 0.648 )0.648 )1.497 (h)

very nearly ellipses as shown in Figure 6. The instability of the obtained

transfers can be explained by the fact that they are perturbations of trajec-
tories passing near the stable manifolds of periodic orbits in the PCR3BP as
shown in Figure 7.

8. Conclusions

In this paper we have adopted the perturbed PCR3BP as the spacecraft model
and constructed Earth-to-Moon transfers with low cost and moderate flight
time. We numerically solved a non-linear BVP and continued its solutions
with parameters to obtain optimal transfer trajectories. Especially, the nec-
essary total injection near the Moon is lowered even up to 15.3% from a
traditional Hohmann type transfer’s. The obtained transfers were also shown
to be perturbations of trajectories passing near the stable manifolds of peri-
odic orbits around the Lagrange point L1 in the PCR3BP, and to be unstable
like WSB transfers. The approach used here will also be promising in principle
to search low energy transfers from the Earth to the other planets.
In comparison with the WSB transfers of Belbruno et al. (1997) and
Belbruno and Carrico (2000) our low energy transfers’ flight time is much
shorter and their first injections near the Earth are more or less lower. In
particular, one of them has 8% shorter flight time than the Hohmann transfer
while its total injection is still 1% lower than the Hohmann type transfer’s.
Such a transfer will be useful for space travels to the Moon in the near future.
However, their necessary total injections are still high, compared with the
WSB transfers. It costs 1 million dollars per pound to bring anything to the
Moon from the Earth, and hence the difference between 15 and 25% in
 SUN-PERTURBED EARTH-TO-MOON TRANSFERS 211

reduction of the total injection from the Hohmann type transfer is rather
large. Further work is expected to improve the performance of these transfers.
Our result shows along with Belbruno and Miller (1993) and Koon et al.
(2000b, 2001) that one should take into account the Sun’s gravitational force
to design a transfer trajectory from the Earth to the Moon. It goes without
saying that at a point far from the Earth and Moon the Sun’s gravitation is
very large in comparison with the Earth’s and Moon’s, and even at the Moon
position it is about twice and a half as large as the Earth’s. Another reason of
our success is that the PCR3BP and Sun-perturbed PCR3BP are noninteg-
rable and possess a variety of trajectories unlike the Kepler problem. This
property should also be further explored in the space technology.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the anonymous referees for helpful comments
and suggestions, which have improved this work.

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