Lumped geopotential harmonics of order 29, from analysis of the orbit of Cosmos 837 rocket

Abstract

The orbit of Cosmos 837 rocket (1976-62E) has been determined at 36 epochs between January and September 1978, using the RAE orbit refinement program PROP 6 with about 3000 observations. The inclination was 62.7° and the eccentricity 0.039. The orbital accuracy achieved was between 30m and 150m, both radial and crosstrack. The orbit was near 29:2 resonance in 1978 (exact resonance occurred on 14 May) and the values of orbital inclination obtained have been analysed to derive lumped 29th-order geopotential harmonic coefficients, namely: 10 9 C 0,2 29 = − 10 ± 15 and 10 9 S 0,2 29 = −76 ± 12 . These will be used in future, when enough results at different inclinations have accumulated, to determine individual coefficients of order 29. The values of lumped harmonics obtained from analysis of the values of eccentricity were not well defined, because of the high correlations between them and the errors in removing the very large perturbation (31 km) due to odd zonal harmonics.