Phasing Maneuver Analysis from a Low Lunar Orbit to a Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit

The paper describes the preliminary design of a phasing trajectory in a cislunar environment, where the third body perturbation is considered non-negligible. The working framework is the one proposed by the ESA’s Heracles mission in which a passive target station is in a Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit and an active vehicle must reach that orbit to start a rendezvous procedure. In this scenario the authors examine three different ways to design such phasing maneuver under the circular restricted three-body problem hypotheses: Lambert/differential correction, Hohmann/differential correction and optimization. The three approaches are compared in terms of ΔV consumption, accuracy and time of flight. The selected solution is also validated under the more accurate restricted elliptic three-body problem hypothesis.