Overview

• Researchers from the Beijing Institute of Technology report the results in an August 2025 Acta Astronautica paper led by Zhenyu Li.
• Including planetary moons as gravity-assist partners increases the number of weak stability boundaries, creating more capture opportunities.
• The team’s Jupiter scenario used Callisto to demonstrate measurable propellant savings for achieving a stable orbit in the Jovian system.
• The approach remains at the research stage and did not factor into current trajectories such as ESA’s JUICE mission.
• The work builds on gravity-assist braking practices seen with BepiColombo and uses tools such as Poincaré mapping to identify efficient paths; prior theory also notes rare natural captures in systems like Neptune–Triton.