Dynamics of a tethered satellite with variable mass

Abstract

In this paper, we provide an analytical study regarding the dynamics of a tethered satellite system, when the central gravitational field is generated by a variable mass object. We show that, in general, the equations of motion for the tethered satellite in the general case as well as in satellite approximation become different from the classical ones, provided that variable mass is considered. We also prove that these expressions could be reduced to the classical ones under the first Meshcherskii's law for variable mass. Moreover, we show that Meshcherskii's transformation is not valid for the dynamics of a dumbbell satellite system.