Accession Number:

AD0776244

Title:

The Motion of an Artificial Satellite in a Nonspherical Gravitational Field and an Atmosphere with a Quadratic Scale Height.

Descriptive Note:

Technical memo.,

Corporate Author:

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIV SILVER SPRING MD APPLIED PHYSICS LAB

Personal Author(s):

• Pisacane,V. L.
• Willey,R. E.

Report Date:

1974-01-01

Pagination or Media Count:

59.0

Abstract:

The report presents the development of a solution for satellite orbits in a nonrotating atmosphere and takes into account the second through fourth zonal harmonics of the gravitational potential. It is basically an extension of Lanes work in that his power-law representation of the atmospheric density function, which implies a linear density scale height, is replaced by a density function with a quadratic density scale height. The quadratic scale height is shown to provide a substantially better fit to the atmospheric density. To integrate the equations of motion analytically, it is necessary to expand the density function in a series. Limitations which appear in the Lane and the Brouwer and Hori theories for small eccentricities, low inclinations, and critical inclinations still exist. Modified author abstract

Descriptors:

• *ARTIFICIAL SATELLITES
• *ORBITS
• *EQUATIONS OF MOTION
• NUMERICAL INTEGRATION
• GEOPOTENTIAL
• GRAVITY
• APPROXIMATION(MATHEMATICS)
• ATMOSPHERIC DENSITY

Subject Categories:

• Spacecraft Trajectories and Reentry

Distribution Statement:

APPROVED FOR PUBLIC RELEASE