Cislunar Transport: Orbits, Tugs and Relays
How do spacecraft move between Earth orbit, lunar orbit and the surface, and is there a business in the space between?
Chapter summary
"cislunar" means the region between Earth and the Moon, including lunar orbits and the Lagrange points.
Key takeaways
- 1
Missions use a handful of orbits: low lunar orbit (fast access to the surface, unstable without fuel), the near-rectilinear halo orbit chosen for Gateway (stable, always in view of Earth, but about 2.5 km/s from the surface) and distant retrograde orbits.
- 2
A small market has emerged for transfer vehicles and relay satellites, worth tens to low hundreds of millions of dollars a year, almost all of it government-funded.
- 3
A larger market, moving propellant and cargo between orbits, exists only if refuelling and lunar propellant work.
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