An orbital element formulation without solving Kepler's equation

Abstract

Starting from a standard orbital element formulation adopting the mean anomaly or longitude as the element related to time, changing its independent variable from the physical time to the corresponding eccentric angle, and replacing the mean angle with the time element of Stiefel & Scheifele, we present a new orbital element formulation of perturbed two-body problems which requires no solution of Kepler's equation. © 2008. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.