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NRHO

Near-rectilinear halo orbit

Files

Click here to download the trajectory.
Click here to download the run options file.

Description

A near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) is not a perfect ellipse; its path depends on the influence of not one but two massive bodies.  An NRHO that travels around the Moon is being considered for NASA’s Lunar Gateway, and the CAPSTONE (Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment) cubesat mission entered this orbit in late 2022.  The trajectory used here is a sample NRHO developed by Lee (2019).

Although the NRHO technically orbits the Earth-Moon L2 Lagrange point, it superficially resembles an eccentric lunar orbit.  A spacecraft on the Lee trajectory would pass within 1500 km of the lunar surface at its closest point and reach just over 70,000 km at its farthest.  Thus, this trajectory maintains its distance from the lunar surface even at its closest point.  The meteoroid environment encountered along the NRHO trajectory will therefore be quite similar to the interplanetary environment at 1 au. 

Graphics

Trajectory in inertial frame

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Trajectory in Sun-centered ecliptic frame

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Meteoroid flux and properties

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Meteoroid directionality in body-fixed frame

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