Section: New Results

Non-singular analytical solution of perturbed satellite motion using Milankovitch elements

Participants : Lamberto Dell'Elce, Pini Gurfil [Technion, Israel] , Gianpaolo Izzo [Technion, Israel] , Aaron J. Rosengren [Univ. of Arizona, US] .

In the brief span of time after the launch of Sputnik, a whole succession of analyses was devoted to the problem poised by the drag-free motion of an artificial satellite about an oblate planet, employing almost every known perturbation method. Although in a sense, the problem is a classic one that also occurred among the natural satellites, it was necessary in the applications of artificial satellite motion to obtain a more general, detailed, and accurate solution. In this study, we developed a new formulation of the mean-to-osculating conversion for first-order oblateness perturbations based on the Milankovitch elements [74] that corrects the critical-inclination deficiency. We use the direct method of Kozai [67], and present an explicit analytical short-period correction in vector form that is valid for all orbits with nonzero angular momentum. Preliminary results were presented at the International Symposium of Space Flight Mechanics (ISSFM) [19].