Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy

, Volume 126, Issue 4, pp 405–432 | Cite as

Forced periodic motions by solar radiation pressure around uniformly rotating asteroids

Original Article
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Abstract

Since asteroids generally have relatively weak gravity fields, solar radiation pressure (SRP) is a major perturbation for orbits in their vicinity, which under certain circumstances can be even larger than the third-body gravitational perturbations. In this work, by adopting a triaxial ellipsoid model for the asteroid and taking into account of SRP, the forced periodic motions caused by SRP around equilibrium points are studied in the body-fixed frame of the asteroid. For forced periodic motions around saddle equilibrium points, we find that the SRP does not alter their stability yet does change the morphology of the associated invariant manifolds. For forced periodic motions around center equilibrium points, different types of orbits are identified. Their stability changes with different parameters, i.e., the asteroid’s shape and spin period, the latitude of the Sun, and the magnitude of SRP. Evolution of these forced periodic motions is described in detail and some interesting phenomena are found. Stability results found for our ideal model with the Sun at a fixed distance and latitude are shown to predict stability regions in a realistic model with the Sun on inclined and elliptic orbits. Though our work is based on the simplified triaxial ellipsoid model, similar computation method and conclusions should also be applicable to real asteroids.

Keywords

Asteroid exploration Solar radiation pressure Periodic orbit Stability Saddle equilibrium (SE) Center equilibrium (CE) 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

This work was finished during the first author’s visit to the Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research (CCAR). X.S.X thanks Nicola Baresi, David Surovik and Inkwan Park for their valuable discussions and help during the visit. X.S.X and X.Y.H thank the support from National Natural Science Foundation of China (11322330) and National Basic Research Program of China (2013CB834100). All authors thank the anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments.

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.School of Astronomy and Space ScienceNanjing UniversityNanjingChina
  2. 2.Department of Aerospace Engineering SciencesUniversity of Colorado at BoulderBoulderUSA

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