AAS 98-131

NON-INTEGRABILITY AND CHAOS IN SATELLITE ORBITAL DYNAMICS

M. E. Sansaturio - E.T.S de Ingenieros Industriales, Spain; I. Vigo-Aguiar, J. M. Ferrandiz - Universidat de Alicante, Spain

Abstract

Non-integrability and chaos are phenomena which appear in satellite dynamics and can affect the predictability of the solutions to a greater or lesser degree. In this paper, we first give a summary of the results so far obtained on the non-integrability resulting from different gravitational perturbations acting on a satellite, putting the stress on the auxiliary particular solutions used in the proofs and on their interpretation from the orbital dynamics point of view. Later on, we present some numerical experiments relative to some of the aforementioned problems. In particular, for the J22 problem, the corresponding Poincare sections for different values of the parameter J22 are built, showing the appearance of chaos.

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