Periodic and quasi-periodic orbit design based on the center manifold theory

This paper proposes a new numerical method for finding libration point orbits in the vicinity of collinear libration points in the circular restricted three-body problem. The main advantage of this method is that it requires neither an initial guess nor complex algebraic manipulations for finding both quasi-periodic and periodic orbits. The proposed method consists of two steps: center manifold design and differential correction. The first step provides a quasi-periodic orbit parametrized by a single parameter vector. In the second step, the parameter vector in the first step is used to obtain an exact periodic orbit. This method is applied to find periodic and quasi-periodic orbits in the Sun-Earth restricted three-body problem around the L1 and L2 libration points. •A new numerical method for finding libration point orbits is proposed.•The center manifold theorem is applied to obtain quasi-periodic orbits.•Quasi-periodic orbits are corrected to exact periodic orbits.•Neither an initial guess nor complex algebraic manipulations are required.