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Colloquium September 22

Date: Friday September 22

Time: 16:00 to 17:00

Place: 455 McBryde (Commons Room)

Speaker: Shane Ross of ESM, Virginia Tech

Title: New Methods in Celestial Mechanics and Space Mission Design

Abstract

The title of this talk is inspired by the work of Poincare, who introduced many key dynamical systems methods during his research on celestial mechanics and especially the three body problem. Since then, many researchers have contributed to his legacy by developing and applying these methods to problems in many areas. In recent years, these methods have come full circle with the application of chaotic transport theory to the design of space mission trajectories.

One of the key ideas is that the competing gravitational pull between celestial bodies creates a vast array of passageways that wind around the sun, planets and moons. The boundaries of these passageways are realized geometrically as invariant manifolds attached to equilibrium points and periodic orbits in interlinked three body problems. A picture is emerging of tube-like structures which form an interplanetary transport network that will facilitate the exploration of the Moon, the asteroids, and the outer solar system, including a mission to assess the possibility of life on Jupiter's icy moons. We summarize these ideas, including their relationship to other problems in dynamics and control, and discuss future directions.

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