Sources of Orbital Perturbations

Several external forces cause perturbation to spacecraft orbit

3rd body effects, e.g., sun, moon, other planets Unsymmetrical central bodies (oblateness caused by rotation rate of body):
Earth: Requator = 6378 km, Rpolar = 6357 km mascons

Space Environment: atmosphere drag ,solar pressure

GN/MAE155B 1

Longitudinal changes
The earth is neither a perfect sphere nor a perfect ellipse. The earth is flattened at the poles ;the equatorial diameter is about 20km more than the average pole diameter In addition to these nonregular features of the earth, there are regions where the avg. density of the earth appears to be higher .These are referred to as regions of mass concentration or Mascons. The nonsphericity of the earth, the non circularity of the equatorial radius, and the mascons lead to a nonuniform gravitational field around the earth. The force on an orbiting satellite will therefore vary with position

 For leo satellite the rapid change in position of the satellite with respect to the earth surface will lead to an averaging out of the perturbing forces in line with the orbital velocity vector. A geostationary satellite is weightless when in orbit. The smallest force on the satellite will cause it to accelerate and then drift away from its nominal location The satellite is required to maintain the longitudinal position over the equator, but there will be an additional force toward the nearest equatorial bulge in either eastward or westward direction along the orbital plane Since this will rarely be in line with the main gravitational force toward the earth center there will be a resultant component of force acting in the same direction as the satellite velocity or against it depending on the position of the satellite in the geo orbit. This will lead to resultant acceleration or deceleration component that varies with the longitudinal location of the satellite

 Due to the position of the Mascons and equatorial bulges, there are four equilibrium points in the geostationary orbit: two of them are stable and two are unstable. The stable points are analogous to the bottom of a valley and the unstable points to the top of the hill The satellite at an unstable orbital location is at the top of the gravity hill Given a small force it will drift down the gravity slope into the gravity well and finally stay there at the stable position. The stable points are at about 75E and 252E and the unstable points are at 162E and 348E If a satellite is perturbed slightly from one of the stable points, it will tend to drift back to the stable point A satellite that is perturbed slightly from one of the unstable points it reaches this point it will oscillate in longitudinal position about this point until it stabilizes at that point. This stable points are sometimes called graveyard geosynchronous orbit locations

Inclination changes
The plane of the earth orbit around the sun Ecliptic is at an inclination of 7.3degree to the equatorial plane of the sun. The earth is tilted about 23deg away from the normal to the ecliptic. The moon circles the earth with an inclination of round 5deg to the equatorial plane of the earth Due to the fact that the various planes the suns equator, earth equator and the moon orbital plane around the earth -are all different, a satellite in orbit around the earth will be subjected to a variety of out of plane forces That is there will generally be a net acceleration force that is not in the plane of the satellite orbit and that will tend to try to change the inclination of the satellite orbit from its initial inclination

 The mass of the sun is significantly larger than that of the moon but the moon is closer to the earth than the sun. for this reason, the acceleration force induced by the moon on a geostationary satellite is about twice as large as that of the sun The net effect of the acceleration forces induced by the moon and the sun on geostationary satellite is to change the plane of the orbit at an initial average rate of 0.85deg/yr from the equatorial plane When both the sun and moon are acting on the same side of the satellite orbit the rate of the change of the plane of the geostationary satellite orbit will be higher than the average. When they are on opposite sides of the orbit the rate of change of the plane of the satellite orbit will be less than the average

 In some cases to increase the orbital maneuver lifetime of a satellite for a given fuel load, mission planners deliberately place a satellite planned for geostationary orbit into an initial orbit with an inclination that is substantially larger than the nominal 0.05deg for a geostationary satellite. FIND OUT WHY?