Patent Document ID: 8655589
Application ID: 13435641
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A method for controlling a motion of an object from a geostationary transit orbit (GTO) of an earth to an orbit of a moon, comprising: determining a first trajectory of the motion of the object from an intermediate orbit of an earth to a neighborhood of a stable manifold of a first Lagrange point (L1); determining a second trajectory of the motion of the object from the GTO to the intermediate orbit; determining a third trajectory of the motion of the object from the neighborhood of the stable manifold to an L1 orbit; determining a fourth trajectory of the motion of the object from the L1 orbit to the orbit of the moon; and determining a trajectory from the GTO to the orbit of the moon based on a combination of the first trajectory, the second trajectory, the third trajectory, and the fourth trajectory, wherein steps of the method are performed by a processor; wherein the determining the first trajectory further comprises: determining a set of zero-fuel trajectories from a set of orbits of the earth to the neighborhood using an approximate mapping of a perturbation of the motion by a gravity of the moon; selecting a zero-fuel trajectory optimizing the time of the trip; and modifying the zero-fuel trajectory to determine the first trajectory such that the first trajectory satisfies a constraint on the time of flight while optimizing the consumption of the fuel.