Contingency Trajectory Design for a Lunar Orbit Insertion Maneuver Failure by the Lunar Atmosphere Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) Spacecraft

The purpose of this extended abstract is to present results from a failed lunar-orbit insertion (LOI) maneuver contingency analysis for the Lunar Atmosphere Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) mission, managed and operated by NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, CA. The LADEE spacecrafts nominal trajectory implemented multiple sub-lunar phasing orbits centered at Earth before eventually reaching the Moon (Fig. 1) where a critical LOI maneuver was to be performed [1,2,3]. If this LOI was missed, the LADEE spacecraft would be on an Earth-escape trajectory, bound for heliocentric space. Although a partial mission recovery is possible from a heliocentric orbit (to be discussed in the full paper), it was found that an escape-prevention maneuver could be performed several days after a hypothetical LOI-miss, allowing a return to the desired science orbit around the Moon without leaving the Earths sphere-of-influence (SOI).