Effect of 3rd-degree gravity harmonics and Earth perturbations on lunar artificial satellite orbits

S. Tzirti (1) , K. Tsiganis (1) , H. Varvoglis (1)

1 Department of Physics [Thessaloniki]

In a previous work we studied the effects of (I) the and terms of the lunar potential and (II) the rotation of the primary on the critical inclination orbits of artificial satellites. Here, we show that, when 3rd-degree gravity harmonics are taken into account, the long-term orbital behavior and stability are strongly affected, especially for a non-rotating central body, where chaotic or collision orbits dominate the phase space. In the rotating case these phenomena are strongly weakened and the motion is mostly regular. When the averaged effect of the Earth's perturbation is added, chaotic regions appear again for some inclination ranges. These are more important for higher values of semi-major axes. We compute the main families of periodic orbits, which are shown to emanate from the 'frozen eccentricity' and 'critical inclination' solutions of the axisymmetric problem (' + '). Although the geometrical properties of the orbits are not preserved, we find that the variations in , and can be quite small, so that they can be of practical importance to mission planning.

Mots clés: Lunar artificial satellites; 3rd-degree gravity coefficients; 3rd-body effect; Frozen satellite orbits; Critical inclination; Periodic orbits

S. Tzirti, K. Tsiganis, H. Varvoglis. Effect of 3rd-degree gravity harmonics and Earth perturbations on lunar artificial satellite orbits. Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy, 2010, 108 (4), pp.389-404. ⟨10.1007/s10569-010-9313-3⟩. ⟨hal-00584606⟩