On the third-body perturbations of high-altitude orbits

Abstract

The long-term effects of a distant third-body on a massless satellite that is orbiting an oblate body are studied for a high order expansion of the third-body disturbing function. This high order may be required, for instance, for Earth artificial satellites in the so-called MEO region. After filtering analytically the short-period angles via averaging, the evolution of the orbital elements is efficiently integrated numerically with very long step-sizes. The necessity of retaining higher orders in the expansion of the third-body disturbing function becomes apparent when recovering the short-periodic effects required in the computation of reliable osculating elements.