Translunar Trajectories for Electric Sail Testing

The aim of this paper is the analysis of a potential mission scenario that could be used for testing the Electric Solar Wind Sail (E-sail). Such a propulsive system is more efficient outside the Earth’s magnetosphere, so a translunar mission (where the spacecraft is supposed to be inserted as a secondary payload) is hypothesized, in which at least a part of the spacecraft trajectory is around or beyond the Moon’s orbit. The analysis of potential selenocentric trajectories is conducted with a three-dimensional generalization of the classical patched conic approximation. In particular, two cases are considered: a closed selenocentric orbit, and a Moon flyby that inserts the spacecraft on a geocentric orbit with some branches outside of the Earth’s magnetosphere.