Attainable sets approach for low-energy, low-thrust terplanetary ransfers

The purpose of the paper is to introduce an approach of attainable sets which efficiently enclose a set of feasible solutions associated to a set of admissible initial conditions. The method to incorporate low-thrust propulsion into the invariant manifolds technique and its application on Homoclinic connection, based on fast numerical approximation of invariant manifolds, is presented in this paper. The low-thrust propulsion is introduced by means of special attainable sets that are used in conjunction with invariant manifolds to define a first-guess solution. This is later optimized in a more refined model where optimal control formalism is used.