Capture an asteroid to earth-moon triangular libration points

This paper is devoted to the capture mechanism of asteroids to the Earth-Moon system via triangular libration points. The dynamical problem is simplified as a combination of circular restricted three body problem (CR3BP) of the Earth and the Moon inside the Earth’s sphere of influence (SOI) and a CR3BP of the Sun and the Earth. Due to the strong stability of motion near triangular libration points in the Earth-Moon system, the transfer segments inside the Earth’s SOI is constructed by chaos-assisted method. The outside segment is then obtained by Lambert transfers and differential correction. To guide the selection of the target asteroid, the total fuel consumption is evaluated and illustrated ergodically on the plane of the semi-major axis and eccentricity of the asteroid’s orbit in two extreme cases, i.e., perigee and apogee cases. Finally, the asteroids, whose orbits intersect directly with the Earth’s SOI, are analyzed separately.