Precise analytical computation of frozen-eccentricity, low earth orbits in a tesseral potential

Abstract

Classical procedures for designing Earth's mapping missions rely on a preliminary frozen-eccentricity orbit analysis. This initial exploration is based on the use of zonal gravitational models, which are frequently reduced to a simple J2 - J3 analysis. However, the J2 - J3 model may not be accurate enough for some applications. Furthermore, lower order truncations of the geopotential are known to fail in describing the behavior of elliptic frozen orbits properly. Inclusion of a higher degree geopotential, which also takes into account the short-period effects of tesseral harmonics, allows for the precise computation of frozen-eccentricity, low Earth orbits that show smaller long-period effects in long-term propagations than those obtained when using the zonal model design. © 2013 Martin Lara et al.