Abstract
The study of the solar corona has important ramifications on the understanding and forecasting of space weather phenomena. Yet, regardless of scientific breakthroughs brought by
space-based coronagraphs, access to the lowest layers of the Sun’s atmosphere remains possible mostly during rare and sporadic total solar eclipses on Earth. This paper introduces the
preliminary trajectory design analyses of a Moon-Enabled Sun Occultation Mission (MESOM), which capitalizes on synodic resonant orbits in the Sun-Earth-Moon four body problem to enable global and high-quality measurements of the solar corona below 1.02 sun radii
once every synodic month (e.g., 29.6 days)