Identifying and Mitigating Chaos in the Cislunar Dynamical Regime
Apollo 11 Postdoctoral Fellowships at Purdue - Proposal
Background
Every concept for use of the space domain is based on sustained operations, and all incorporate the cislunar environment. Individual spacecraft as well as any multi-spacecraft network requires satisfactory trajectories.
A more flexible, ‘compute on demand’ capability is necessary to enable the type of operations that are imagined. This transformation will be particularly challenging beyond Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO) where both the Earth and the Moon exert a similar influence along with the centrifugal force from the lunar rotational motion. The cislunar dynamical environment is inherently chaotic, as spacecraft are simultaneously influenced by the gravity from multiple celestial bodies.
The Earth-Moon Circular Restricted Three-Body Problem (CR3BP) offers an invaluable lower-fidelity model for managing these complexities, but its orderly behaviors may not persist in a more realistic Higher-Fidelity Ephemeris Model (HFEM). Significant gaps remain in both analytical and numerical efforts to characterize the persistence and/or breakdown of (quasi-)periodic structures from the CR3BP under the additional forces that exist in a real-world model.
Establishing clear criteria to evaluate the evolution of the CR3BP dynamics is crucial for cislunar space exploration and utilization, enabling efficient global characterization of spacecraft behavior across different dynamical regimes. If these orderly structures persist, it is possible to introduce numerical algorithms that harness them within the HFEM.
Conversely, if chaos prevails, mitigation strategies are required.
Research Goals
To address the chaotic nature of the cislunar environment, this research effort proposes the following three goals:
- Establish a theoretical foundation for the mechanisms that introduce chaos in cislunar space.
- Validate the theory through numerical examinations.
- Develop applications focused on mitigating chaos in the design process as well as an operational implementation.
Affiliated Faculty
Hsu Lo Distinguished Professor Kathleen Howell
School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Purdue University