Abstract
For a rigid body of arbitrary shape and sufficiently slow rotation, it is shown that, with unit probability, the number of possible ‘geostationary' orbit positions for a small satellite is even, with a minimum of two. These are shown to be of two types which occur alternately around closed paths encircling the rotation axis. The first type is exponentially unstable to small perturbations in longitude, whereas for the second type the corresponding perturbations are oscillatory.
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More From: Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. A. Mathematical and Physical Sciences
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