New techniques for space science missions

Space exploration was born from the space race between the USSR and the USA, when the two superpowers were driven by the idea that the technological progress, required by spaceflight, could lead to military supremacy, contribute to national security and, eventually, symbolize ideological superiority. In such a hectic context, the readiness of the solutions proposed was predominant over their accessibility and affordability, features nowadays crucial, since space related activities expanded to cover a wide variety of areas of scientific research. New techniques are therefore necessary, to solve the old problem of space exploration complying the modern space mission requirements. In the recent years, there has been a growing interest in space missions related to the dynamics of three body systems. In such a framework, special non-Keplerian trajectories exist and it can be taken advantage of them to design low energy transfers between celestial bodies, requiring less propellant than classical transfers and increasing the flexibility of the mission by either allowing extending the launch window or transferring spacecraft to more orbits on a given date. Also, spacecraft operating in proximity of a collinear libration point, such as space stations and telescopes, can be envisioned and they could greatly benefit from being placed in regions characterized by small perturbations. In this work, I present the state of the art of the modern techniques of mission analysis and give a review of some selected missions based on them, with the aim of defining the topics to further investigate during my PhD.