Related papers: Lunar close encounters compete with the circumterr…
The leading-trailing asymmetry in lunar crater distribution provides a critical record of inner solar system dynamics, yet the long-standing discrepancy between the observed higher asymmetry and lower theoretical predictions indicates a gap…
The transfer of material between planetary bodies due to impact events is important for understanding planetary evolution, meteoroid impact fluxes, the formation of near-Earth objects (NEOs), and even the provenance of volatile and organic…
We consider the Earth-Moon planar circular restricted three body problem and present a proof of the existence orbits, which approach arbitrarily close to one of the primary masses, and at the same time after each approach they move away…
It is known that most of the craters on the surface of the Moon were created by the collision of minor bodies of the Solar System. Main Belt Asteroids, which can approach the terrestrial planets as a consequence of different types of…
The orbital dynamics of a spacecraft, or a comet, or an asteroid in the Earth-Moon system in a scattering region around the Moon using the three dimensional version of the circular restricted three-body problem is numerically investigated.…
In the leading theory of lunar formation, known as the giant impact hypothesis, a collision between two planet-size objects resulted in a young Earth surrounded by a circumplanetary debris disk from which the Moon later accreted. The range…
Understanding the dynamical structure of cislunar space beyond geosynchronous orbit is critical for both lunar exploration and for high-Earth-orbiting trajectories. In this study, we investigate the role of mean-motion resonances and their…
The Moon is generally thought to have formed from the debris ejected by the impact of a planet-sized object with the proto-Earth towards the end of planetary accretion. Modeling of the impact process predicts that the lunar material was…
There is a growing number of Earth's co-orbital bodies being discovered. At least five of them are known to be temporarily in quasi-satellite orbits. One of those, 469219 Kamo'oalewa, was identified as possibly having the same composition…
The meeting of two spacecraft in orbit around a planet or moon involves a delicate dance that must carefully the balance the gravitational, Coriolis, and centrifugal forces acting on the spacecraft. The intricacy of the relative motion…
Many triple-star systems have an inner pair with an orbital period of a few days only. A common mechanism to explain the short-period pile-up present in the observations is the migration through Lidov-Kozai cycles combined with tidal…
Lunar ejecta, produced by meteoroidal impacts, have been proposed for the origin of the near-Earth asteroid (469219) Kamo'oalewa, supported by its unusually Earth-like orbit and L-type reflectance spectrum (Sharkey et al., 2021). In a…
Aims. Particles ejected from the lunar surface via hypervelocity impacts form a torus between the Earth and the Moon. According to our previous study (Yang et al., A\&A, 659, A120), among them about $2.3\times10^{-4}\,\mathrm{kg/s}$…
A co-orbital asteroid shares the orbit of a secondary body about its primary. Though more commonly encountered as an asteroid that shares a planet's orbit around the Sun, a co-orbital asteroid could similarly share the orbit of the Moon…
This paper shows how the exposure of the Moon to the Earth's plasmasheet is subject to decadal variations due to lunar precession. The latter is a key property of the Moon's apparent orbit around the Earth - the nodes of that orbit precess…
This manuscript analyzes lunar lander soil erosion models and trajectory models to calculate how much damage will occur to spacecraft orbiting in the vicinity of the Moon. The soil erosion models have considerable uncertainty due to gaps in…
In the framework of multi-body dynamics, successive encounters with a third body, even if well outside of its sphere of influence, can noticeably alter the trajectory of a spacecraft. Examples of these effects have already been exploited by…
Near-Earth asteroid, Kamo'oalewa (469219), is one of a small number of known quasi-satellites of Earth; it transitions between quasi-satellite and horseshoe orbital states on centennial timescales, maintaining this dynamics over megayears.…
A recent analysis of a Lunar Laser Ranging (LLR) data record spanning 38.7 yr revealed an anomalous increase of the eccentricity of the lunar orbit amounting to de/dt_meas = (9 +/- 3) 10^-12 yr^-1. The present-day models of the dissipative…
An ancient Venusian rock could constrain that planet's history, and reveal the past existence of oceans. Such samples may persist on the Moon, which lacks an atmosphere and significant geological activity. We demonstrate that if Venus'…