Solutions and periodicity of satellite relative motion under even zonal harmonics perturbations

Abstract

Finding relative satellite orbits that guarantee long-term bounded relative motion is important for cluster flight, wherein a group of satellites remain within bounded distances while applying very few formationkeeping maneuvers. However, most existing astrodynamical approaches utilize mean orbital elements for detecting bounded relative orbits, and therefore cannot guarantee long-term boundedness under realistic gravitational models. The main purpose of the present paper is to develop analytical methods for designing long-term bounded relative orbits under high-order gravitational perturbations. The key underlying observation is that in the presence of arbitrarily high-order even zonal harmonics perturbations, the dynamics are superintegrable for equatorial orbits. When only J2 is considered, the current paper offers a closed-form solution for the relative motion in the equatorial plane using elliptic integrals. Moreover, necessary and sufficient periodicity conditions for the relative motion are determined. The proposed methodology for the J2-perturbed relative motion is then extended to non-equatorial orbits and to the case of any high-order even zonal harmonics (J2n, n ≥ 1). Numerical simulations show how the suggested methodology can be implemented for designing bounded relative quasiperiodic orbits in the presence of the complete zonal part of the gravitational potential.