SEARCHING FOR MORE STABLE PERTURBED ORBITS AROUND THE EARTH

The goal of the present paper is to search for orbits around the Earth that are more stable, in the sense of presenting minimum variations with respect to a Keplerian initial orbit. This variation will be measured by the integral of the differences of the radius vector of the real perturbed orbit and the equivalent vector of the Keplerian orbit that starts at the same point. The search for stable orbits is carried out by making maps of the integral of the magnitude of the disturbing forces. Particularly, the effects of the semi-major axis and the eccentricity of the orbit in those mappings are studied. The disturbing forces considered here are the solar radiation pressure, the Luni-Solar perturbation and the zonal harmonics J(2) to J(4). The results of these integrals are the velocity increment that the perturbation delivers to the satellite. The possibility of using a solar sail to reduce the effects of the other perturbations acting on the satellite is considered using this approach and it shows to be a useful idea.