https://doi.org/10.1140/epjs/s11734-025-01871-x
Regular Article
Viable orbits for the Brazilian Lunar Mission Garatéa-L
1
Centro de Ciência e Tecnologia em Energia e Sustentabilidade, Universidade Federal do Recôncavo da Bahia, Av. Centenário, 44042280, Feira de Santana, Bahia, Brazil
2
Centro Universitario de la Defensa de Zaragoza, Academia General Militar, Crta. de Huesca s/n, 50090, Zaragoza, Aragón, Spain
3
IUMA, Universidad de Zaragoza, Pedro Cerbuna, 12, 50009, Zaragoza, Aragón, Spain
a
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Received:
9
April
2025
Accepted:
17
August
2025
Published online:
26
August
2025
In this work, we analyze the characteristics of the orbits around the Moon, focusing on the Brazilian mission known as Garatéa-L Project. As is known, the Moon’s gravitational field presents significant differences from that of the Earth. In the case of orbits around the Moon, it is necessary to consider high orders of the selenopotential. We show that using a selenopotential of order and degree 
yields results very similar to those obtained with a 
potential. We search for initial conditions with the highest possible inclination, still within the range of nearly frozen orbits, which are those predicted for the Garatéa-L mission. This mission is planned to have a perilune altitude of 30 km and an apolune altitude of 300 km. We found near-frozen polar orbits around the Moon by slightly modifying the perigee altitude of the nominal orbit predicted by the mission from 30 km to 125.149 km. We also found a region of inclinations of possible interest to the Garatéa-L mission that contribute to keeping the perilune argument librating and the eccentricity frozen, maintaining the 30 km perilune altitude for at least one year (near-frozen orbit).
Copyright comment Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to EDP Sciences, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2025
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
