Odd Harmonics of the Earth's Gravitational Field

Abstract

VARIATIONS in the perigee radius have been observed for three satellites so far. The first of these is Vanguard I (1958 beta), which was used by O'Keefe et al. 1 in calculating the third and fifth axial harmonics of the Earth's field. The other two are Transit IB (1960 gamma) and Transit IIA (1960 eta). Nominal values of the pertinent orbit parameters of these three satellites are listed in Table 1. The data on Vanguard are from O'Keefe et al. 1, those on Transit IB are given by Guier2, and those on Transit IIA have not been published before.