Influence of orbital perturbations due to non-spherical Earth shape on the Landsat multispectral imaging platform

Satellites that orbit the Earth at lower altitudes are the predominant type that are deployed in remote sensing missions. Although thee are many well documented advantages in having the Earth-observing satellites in such lower orbits, the altitude parameter often introduces significant variabilities to the orbital elements, the predominant among them being the perturbative forces due to atmospheric drag. The drag parameter causes deviation of the satellite from its actual orbital trajectory. While updated near-Earth atmospheric drag models have helped resolve this issue, there are the other forces that are secondary in importance, such as the non-spherical Earth's shape factor effect and luni-solar perturbations that also affect on remote sensing satellites, particularly of the low-Earth Orbit (LEO) and geosynchronous transfer orbiting (GTO) types, that are considered for this particular study. After verifying the equivalent perturbed acceleration terms using the Cowell's method, variations caused to the classical orbital elements in general, and the altitude element in particular, are characterised in terms of the corresponding distortions caused in the imaging data obtained by the Landsat platform, that are then shown as resulting in a image quality degradation.