halo orbit

First used by NASA mission specialist Robert W. Farquhar in 1966 for calculated orbits around the Earth-Moon L₂ point which required the use of thrusters to be made periodic.

halo orbit (plural halo orbits)

1. (orbital mechanics) A periodic, three-dimensional orbit about any one of the Lagrange points L₁, L₂ or L₃ of a two-body gravitational system.
   • 2001, G. Gómez, À. Jorba, J. Masdemont, C.Simó, Dynamics and Mission Design Near Libration Points, Volume III, World Scientific, page 93:

     Due to the strong hyperbolic character of the halo orbits, the stable manifold approaches the halo orbit in a very fast way. This fact means that if we are able to put the satellite in the stable manifold of a halo orbit, it will be close to the halo orbit (say at [a] few km) in a reasonable period of time.

   • 2013, Yuhui Zhao, Shoucun Hu, Xiyun Hou, Lin Liu, Chapter 39: On Nominal Formation Flying Orbit with a Small Solar System Body, Rongjun Shen, Weiping Qian (editors), Proceedings of the 26th Conference of Spacecraft TT&C Technology in China, Tsinghua University Press, Springer, Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering 187, page 395,

     If the ratio of the amplitude in x-direction to ${\displaystyle \gamma _{1}}$ keeps unchanged (=0.155), the periods of halo orbits are almost the same (about 190 days). As a result of the stability of CRTBP and the dynamics of halo orbit formation, nominal halo orbits do not exist if the ratio is too large or too small.

   • 2013, Daniel García Yárnoz, Joan-Pau Sanchez, Colin R. McInnes, “Chapter 21: Opportunities for Asteroid Retrieval Missions”, in Viorel Badescu, editor, Asteroids: Prospective Energy and Material Resources, Springer, page 486:

     Thus, the minimum possible size for halo orbits in the Sun-Earth system is approximately (240 x 660) 10³ km at L₁ and (250 x 675) 10³ km at L₂, sizes denoting the maximum excursion from the libration point in the x and y directions respectively.

• quasi-halo orbit (= quasi-periodic halo orbit)

• Lissajous orbit
• Lyapunov orbit

• Three-body problem on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Lagrange point on Wikipedia.Wikipedia