Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to Plans, plans and more plans

re: Plans, plans and more plans
gbaikie — (archived)

"I'm pretty sure there's a kind of orbit where you can pass in front of the Moon in its orbit instead of behind it, and thereby get a kind of gravity brake (instead of a gravity boost) relative to both bodies' motion around the Earth, and possibly slide into a low energy trajectory around the back of the Moon and into L-1, thereby reducing your overall delta-V requirement. "

I believe that ESA's SMART-1 will demonstrate this type of trajectory.
{Also the Apollo's abort trajectory does this [you would simply use more delta-v at the moon's backside, so you reduce the trajectory so it's not a lunar escape back to Earth. Also I believe there is spacecraft in EML-2, it would have used a trajectory similar to what is needed [all you need is a high lunar orbit- any L-point would require a low delta-v to transfer from high lunar orbit and EML 1 & 2 could be called a type of high lunar orbit].}

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