The moon likely possesses many minerals that would be useful for future human endeavors. Mining the lunar surface could provide water ice, rare earth elements, and helium-3. These minerals will have to be returned to Earth (or at least low earth orbit) for processing. The goal of this project is to analyze the astrodynamics required for lunar mining resupply and material return missions.
The mission plan being analyzed starts with a spacecraft that in a parking orbit around Earth and travels to the moon. This craft will rendezvous with the moon to obtain the payload of mined materials and return to the Earth.
The first section is an analysis of an orbiter in a coplanar orbit with the moon. Since this will not be practical for entities who would want to mine the moon, another analysis is performed for non-coplanar parking orbits