Overview
- A team from Texas A&M, NASA’s Johnson Space Center and Purdue published algorithms and operational concepts in Acta Astronautica that lay out how multiple spacecraft can share space around the Gateway.
- Gateway will sit in a Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit, a long, egg-shaped path that gives constant Earth contact but creates complex pulls from Earth and the Moon that make multi-vehicle operations tricky.
- The researchers ran thousands of simulations that included realistic navigation errors and imperfect thrusters to test holding patterns where vehicles loiter in a ‘string of pearls’ and use modest station-keeping burns.
- Results show that modest increases in routine station-keeping let vehicles hold closer to planned positions, which reduces collision risk, improves predictability for docking windows, and costs only small amounts of extra propellant.
- The work is conceptual and simulation-based, intended to guide Gateway mission designers and the emerging field of cislunar traffic management as planners work to turn these ideas into operational procedures and international rules.