AAS 97-124

REDUCING THE GEOPOTENTIAL TESSERAL HARMONIC EFFECTS ON AUTONOMOUS LONGITUDE DRIFT CONTROL OF SUN-SYNCHCRONOUS SATELLITES

V. Orlando and H. K. Kuga, INPE-Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais, Brazil

Abstract

Within a cooperation between INPE and CNES (France), a study of a method of autonomous longitude phase drift control was simulated and applied to phased orbits. The paper deals with the reduction of oscillations imposed by tesseral harmonics on the observations of longitude phase drift rate, in order to improve autonomous orbit control procedures. We started from a revised issue of the Ustinov's theory for near circular orbits. The full equations for the tesseral harmonics perturbations on the semi-major axis and inclination have given an approximation for low altitude, near zero eccentricity and near polar phased orbits.