Symplectic orbit propagation based on Deprit’s radial intermediary

Abstract

The constantly challenging requirements for orbit prediction have opened the need for better onboard propagation tools. Runge-Kutta (RK) integrators have been widely used for this purpose; however RK integrators are not symplectic, which means that RK integrators may lead to incorrect global behavior and degraded accuracy. Emanating from Deprit’s radial intermediary, obtained by the elimination of the parallax transformation, we present the development of symplectic integrators of different orders for spacecraft orbit propagation. Through a set of numerical simulations, it is shown that these integrators are more accurate and substantially faster than Runge-Kutta-based methods. Moreover, it is also shown that the proposed integrators are more accurate than analytic propagation algorithms based on Deprit’s radial intermediary solution, and even other previously-developed symplectic integrators.