Design of Low-Energy Transfer Trajectories from Jupiter to Europa with Ballistic Transfer

抄録

This paper aims to construct a method to design low-energy transfer trajectories from Jupiter to Europa, one of the Galilean satellites, via ballistic transfer. The proposed method leverages the periapsis Poincaré map and efficiently finds ballistic transfer trajectories from Jupiter’s sphere of influence (SOI) to Europa. For the evaluation of the proposed method, the interplanetary trajectory from Earth to Jupiter’s SOI is designed by using existing methods, the Tisserand map and multiple gravity assists. By solving the phasing problem that considers the ephemeris of the celestial bodies, this map can find interplanetary trajectories with various transfer times depending on the launch date. It is demonstrated that the periapsis Poincaré map can efficiently find all ballistic transfer trajectories in the region, although it depends on the initial conditions. Furthermore, by applying the clustering method to the obtained ballistic transfer trajectories, we succeeded in finding families of ballistic transfer trajectories existing within the region.