Identification and analysis of interior and exterior resonant orbits in the Sun–Venus system

Abstract

With Venus being Earth’s nearest neighbor and it being similar in size to Earth, it is the ideal candidate for certain mission types. These missions range from scientific, such as helio-physics and space weather monitoring, to defense focused, such as monitoring Earth’s orbital path for meteoroid threats. Limited research has been done on the periodic orbits in the Sun–Venus system. The first step to understanding which orbits could be useful for such a mission is to identify families of resonant periodic orbits in the Sun–Venus system and conduct a stability analysis on these orbits. This research work identifies 90 periodic, resonant orbits in the Sun–Venus system and their associated families of orbits. The orbits are found within the Circular Restricted 3 Body Problem (CR3BP) dynamical model with solar radiation pressure included as a perturbation. The periodic orbits are found using Poincaré maps, and the families are generated using a continuation method that steps through different Jacobi constants. The stability for each orbit in the family is calculated and the structure of the eigenvalues for each is assessed to determine when the family has crossed a bifurcation point. This research work seeks to generate a catalog of resonant orbits within the Sun–Venus system while providing stability and bifurcation information for each resonant orbit family.