Transfer to near-Earth asteroids from a lunar orbit via Earth flyby and direct escaping trajectories

In this paper, transfer trajectories from the Moon to near-Earth asteroids with different escaping trajectory options, Earth flyby and direct escaping, are investigated. The former executes an Earth flyby maneuver to increase the orbital energy during the transfer. The latter realizes the transfer by a single impulse at perilune. In this work, these two kinds of escaping orbits in the Earth-Moon planar circular-restricted three-body (PCRTB) system are analyzed firstly. The abilities to achieve the same Earth hyperbolic excess velocity for both orbits with minimum velocity impulse expenditure are calculated and analyzed. Then, the asteroid flyby trajectory in ephemeris model via two types of escaping orbits is designed. Asteroids 4179 Toutatis from Apollo and 3908 Nyx from Amor, represent the small and large transfer energy, respectively, are chosen as targets. The selection strategy of escaping trajectories for small and large-energy transfers is discussed.