Abstract
It is in the interest of astronomy and engineering to find orbits for spacecraft that allow a good observation of the orbited body and, at the same time, to reduce expenses with fuel consumption for correction and maintenance maneuvers. Considering the current scenario, many of the small bodies in the Solar System have been shown to be good candidates for future study missions, such as planetary moons, asteroids, and dwarf planets, beyond the orbit of Neptune. In this sense, the search for methods that aim to locate favorable orbital configurations for the placement of a spacecraft is an important point to be studied. In particular, it is important to search for orbits with high inclinations and circular or quasi-circular, since these orbits allow the observation of the entire body during its natural rotation. However, these orbits are subject to strong perturbations due to the presence of effects, such as those caused by mother planets and the inhomogeneity of the mass and the shape of the satellites. So, the goal of the present paper is to search for orbital configurations for a spacecraft around small satellites. Therefore, in this paper, we study the perturbations given by planet Saturn in a spacecraft orbiting the satellite Iapetus.
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The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
The authors wish to express their appreciation for the support provided by grant 309089/2021-2 from the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), grant 2016/24561-0 from São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP). This publication has been supported by the RUDN University Scientific Projects Grant System, project No 202235-2-000. We also thank the financial support from the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES). The authors also wish to express their appreciation for the support provided by the High Performance and Cloud Computing Group at the Zentrum für Datenverarbeitung of the University of Tübingen, the state of Baden-Württemberg through bwHPC, the German Research Foundation (DFG) through grant no INST 37/935-1 FUGG and DFG German Research Foundation Project 446102036.
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Ferreira, L.S., Prado, A.F.B.A. & Sfair, R. Searching for orbits to observe Iapetus. Eur. Phys. J. Spec. Top. 232, 2889–2896 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjs/s11734-023-01025-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1140/epjs/s11734-023-01025-x