As the commercial space industry continues to grow, in-space transportation will become an enabling infrastructure for resource mining, manufacturing as well as tourism and scientific endeavors. It was recently estimated that transportation between Lunar and Earth orbits constitute a multi-billion dollar (US) per-year market based primarily on pro-pellant cost. With the use of the Earth's atmosphere for aerobraking as an alternative to fully propulsive transfers, billions of dollars could be saved per year. This translates to improved payload mass fractions which increase the viability of lunar and asteroid mining companies requiring a sustainable in-space transportation infrastructure. These components represent the core of United Launch Alliance's Cis-lunar 1000 vision for the growth of the commercial space industry. This future represents a fundamentally new application of atmospheric deceleration and requires novel perspectives to the overall transfer elements. The current work reviews this new motivation and explores the aerothermody-namic environments which would ultimately drive the final spacecraft design and in-space mission objectives. Analytical methods for hypervelocity gas dynamics are complemented by higher fidelity simulations of discrete-particle dynamics to characterize the aerother-modynamic performance under relevant flight conditions. Initial trajectory analysis using these metrics are performed to understand the vehicles stress and heating exposure for atmospheric passes over a range of perigee altitudes. Results provide a foundation and understanding of the data needed for future trajectory optimization studies.
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