Ballistic design of missions involving the delivery of Lunar soil to the Earth
The paper discusses the design of a mission for delivering lunar soil to the Earth. The analysis of its main stages is carried out. These stages include possible flight pattern selection, analysis of the flight from the Earth to the circular orbit of the Moon artificial satellite, determination of trajectories of removal from lunar surface into the reference orbit, the search for return paths that depart from the Moon and fall into a given area on the Earth’s surface. A variant of determining the initial approximation for the method of return paths constructing is proposed. It is based on solving a two-parameter boundary value problem in the central field of the Earth. Varying the duration of the flight from the Moon to the Earth and the time of the spacecraft approach to the Earth, pointing return trajectory into vicinity of the polygon P is achieved for a given perigee radius. The article presents the main characteristics of the mission obtained using this technique.