Abstract

In this thesis, the continuation and bifurcation software AUTO is used to investigate elemental periodic orbits, certain secondary bifurcating orbit families, and homoclinic orbits, associated with the libration points of the Circular Restricted 3-Body Problem, for values of the mass ratio between 0 and 0.5. Periodic solution families for representative values of the mass ratio, and corresponding bifurcation diagrams, are studied in detail. To understand the solution structure of the Circular Restricted 3-Body Problem better, a new data visualization package, DR Orbits, has been developed. It reads AUTO data files and creates solution diagrams. The package may be useful for space mission design. This new graphics package has good rendering speed, flexibility, and display quality. A user-friendly interface makes DR Orbits easy to use