Sun-perturbed earth-to-moon transfers with low energy and moderate flight time

We construct a spacecraft transfer with low cost and moderate flight time from the Earth to the Moon. The motion of the spacecraft is modeled by the planar circular restricted three-body problem including a perturbation due to the solar gravitation. Our approach is to reduce computation of optimal transfers to a non-linear boundary value problem. Using a computer software called AUTO, we solve it and continue its solutions numerically to obtain the optimal transfers. Our result also shows that the use of the solar gravitation can further lower the transfer cost drastically.