The Jovian system has long attracted the interest of human exploration. However, Jupiter and its four Galilean moons form a unique and complex multi-body dynamical environment that greatly challenges trajectory design and optimization.

Moreover, the extremely strong radiation environment of Jupiter and the low available fuel of spacecraft further increase the difficulty of trajectory design. In order to satisfy the requirements of diverse missions of the Jovian system exploration, develop new mission concepts, and obtain higher merit with lower cost, a variety of theories and methodologies of trajectory design and optimization were proposed or developed in the past two decades.

There is a lack of comprehensive review of these methodologies, which is unfavorable for further developing new design techniques and proposing new mission schemes.

In a review article recently published in Space: Science & Technology, scholars from Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey provide a systematic summarization of the past and state-of-art methodologies for four main exploration phases, including Jupiter capture, the tour of the Galilean moons, Jupiter global mapping, and orbiting around and landing on a target moon.