The purpose of this paper is to assess the orbital perturbation caused by the gravitational orbit–attitude coupling of spacecraft in the proximity of asteroids.

    Design/methodology/approach

    The gravitational orbit–attitude coupling perturbation (GOACP), which has been neglected before in the close-proximity orbital dynamics about asteroids, is investigated and compared with other orbital perturbations. The GOACP has its origin in the fact that the gravity acting on a non-spherical extended body is actually different from that acting on a point mass located at the body’s center of mass, which is the approximated model in the orbital dynamics. Besides, a case study of a tethered satellite system is given by numerical simulations.

    Findings

    It is found that the ratio of GOACP to the asteroid’s non-spherical gravity is the order of ρ/ae, where ρ is the spacecraft’s characteristic dimension and ae is the asteroid’s mean radius. It can also be seen that as ρ increases, GOACP will also increase but the solar radiation pressure (SRP) will decrease due to the decreasing area-to-mass ratio. The GOACP will be more significant than SRP at small orbital radii for a large-sized spacecraft. Based on the results by analyses and simulations, it can be concluded that GOACP needs to be considered in the orbital dynamics for a large-sized spacecraft in the proximity of a small asteroid.

    Practical implications

    This study is of great importance for the future asteroids missions for scientific explorations and near-Earth objects mitigation.

    Originality/value

    The GOACP, which has been neglected before, is revealed and studied.


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    Title :

    Orbital perturbation due to orbit-attitude coupling near asteroids


    Contributors:
    Wang, Yue (author) / Zhong, Rui (author) / Xu, Shijie (author)

    Published in:

    Publication date :

    2018-01-02


    Size :

    10 pages




    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English




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