A novel method of periodic orbit computation in circular restricted three-body problem

Periodic orbits are fundamental keys to understand the dynamical system of circular restricted three-body problem, and they play important roles in practical deep-space exploration. Current methods of periodic orbit computation need a high-order analytical approximate solution to start the iteration process, thus making the computation complicated and limiting the types of periodic orbits that can be obtained. By utilizing the symmetry of the restricted three-body problem, a special kind of flow function is constructed, so as to map a state on the plane of symmetry to another state that also lies in this plane. Based on this flow function, a new method of periodic orbit computation is derived. This method needs neither a starting analytic approximation nor the state transition matrix to be computed, so it can be conveniently implemented on a computer. Besides, this method is unaffected by the nonlinearity of the dynamical system, allowing a large set of periodic orbits which have x-z plane symmetry to be computed numerically. As examples, some planar periodic orbits (e.g. Lyapunov orbit) and spatial periodic orbits (e.g. Halo orbit) are computed. By further combining with a differential correction process, the method introduced here can be used to design resonant orbits that can jump between different resonant frequencies. One such resonant orbit is given in this paper, verifying the efficiency of this method.