A primary challenge of low-thrust mission design is the development of an initial guess for the state and control history of a trajectory. To address this challenge, one technique assembles dynamical structures, such as periodic orbits and their associated manifolds, into discontinuous chains that are corrected to locally optimal transfer solutions via direct transcription. In this investigation, dynamical structures that leverage a low-thrust force in a multi-body regime are incorporated into the orbit chain to expand the options available for construction of an initial guess and to guide the direct transcription algorithm toward different categories of locally optimal solutions. The properties and structures of the low-thrust model that facilitate orbit chain construction are demonstrated in representative transfer scenarios. Direct transcription is applied to converge upon locally optimal transfer trajectories in both simplified and ephemeris models. Results indicate that low-thrust dynamical structures offer a promising catalog of options in an orbit chain approach for designing optimal low-thrust trajectories.
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