Orbiter Technical Notes: Nonspherical gravitational eld perturbations

Martin Schweiger September 21, 2005

1 Introduction
Orbiter uses a zonal representation of the gravitational potential generated by a celestial body, using a Legendre polynomial series expansion in the latitude . The perturbations in longitude ( ) are assumed to be negligible. The potential is expressed as

and are the mass and mean radius of the where is the gravitational constant, central body, respectively, is the length of the radius vector, are the coefcients of the series expansion, and are the Legendre polynomials of order . The rst Legendre polynomials are dened as

The acceleration due to the gravitational eld of a test mass at point then given by the gradient of the potential:

In spherical polar coordinates, the gradient operator is expressed as

f    

F DB @ G ECA ' ' 2

8 9'

wr r vuT @ts r e r p "

 V R0 )aV e Qd

f       if h   g

6 5 3 7 4'

Q  aV

2101()' $& %  " 5 p

c QYV  )A R  Q b P8 b "U QY  ` R  Q W X8 W "U V  0 Q)A R 0  Q 8 " Q R Q S T8  Q R I P8

" #! "  "

r r p e q f h

       ' 8 

(1)

(2)

is (3)

(4)

" # %$ 

r  r

" # ! 

r  r

  

Substituting equations 1 and 4 into 3 yields

The coefcients used by Orbiter are listed in Table 1. The eld perturbations can lead to a rotation of the orbit trajectory of a satellite. This rotation can be expressed in terms of the movement of the longitude of the ascending node ( ) and the movement of the argument of periapsis ( ). If only terms up to are included, approximate values of the movements and are given

 @ t DB @  vus ECV  B@ d  V e 0 D #aV   @ v t s 

(6)

 DB @  ECV

 "

2 U 5 @vus E#@  t DB    Y     b W 2b b 5   c    DB @ Y ECV Y   b b b 2 U   @vus 10 E#TA b 5   V   t DB @ Y   W 2W W  5 DB @  E#TYA     U    W W W 2 @ DB vtus EC@ 0 W 0 b 5   V   0   2 U B   0  0 D #@V 0 0 b 5   V    0   R I g   g g g

 

   ' g p e v  ' g p 

01(a' f $ &   I g p R  g  

with the rst terms given by

Figure 1: Planet-relative coordinates and polar unit vectors at a point

'

(5)

by

where is the mean motion (with orbit period is the eccentricity, and is the inclination.

),

is the mean distance,

Example: calculate the inclination for a sun-synchronous polar orbit

A sun-synchronous orbits exploits the propagation of the line of nodes to keep the orbital plane synchronised with the relative position of the sun. A satellite can for example be placed in a sun-synchronous orbit so that it continuously ys over the planets terminator line. From 7 we have

(9)

A sun-synchronous orbit requires the line of nodes to move at a rate of per year. For Earth, this is equivalent to rad/s (about deg. per day). Assume a circular orbit ( ) at an altitude of 300 km ( m, with m). With we get rad/s. This leads to
sync

(10)

or

sync

deg.

$ %5

d U V vc d ad d d ! d   !  d "   " "  "  $  a)# #" U dad d  g ( & d d "  !#!" W g " d"  d  U   2 " " #r 0 r 0  0 

2 8 0 0  0  6 g 3 H 5 @ s V  0 t " TY 0 2 " 0 0  0  6 g 3 H U  5 @ t vus " 0 V

"

 !    6  V c  V ! 3 ad d YVd @ t U    vus ! 0  V " c  ! $ H " ( g 'U  & d d V!  8 " " W d  " r $)!r       " 5 H V  @t 0  g U  us

" #

" #

 $

 

Table 1: Coefcients (

"

Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune

60 27 1082.6269 1964 14750 16450 12000 4000

-2.51 -

-1.60 -

-0.15 -

) for zonal expansion of planetary gravitational potentials.

b 2

W 2 0

(7) (8)