Chaotic pitch motion of an asymmetric non-rigid spacecraft with viscous drag in circular orbit.

  1. Iñarrea, M. 1
  2. Lanchares, V. 1
  1. 1 Universidad de La Rioja
    info

    Universidad de La Rioja

    Logroño, España

    ROR https://ror.org/0553yr311

Revista:
International Journal of Non-Linear Mechanics

ISSN: 0020-7462

Any de publicació: 2006

Volum: 41

Número: 1

Pàgines: 86-100

Tipus: Article

DOI: 10.1016/J.IJNONLINMEC.2005.06.010 SCOPUS: 2-s2.0-29144439806 WoS: WOS:000235324000007 GOOGLE SCHOLAR

Altres publicacions en: International Journal of Non-Linear Mechanics

Resum

We study the pitch motion dynamics of an asymmetric spacecraft in circular orbit under the influence of a gravity gradient torque. The spacecraft is perturbed by a small aerodynamic drag torque proportional to the angular velocity of the body about its mass center. We also suppose that one of the moments of inertia of the spacecraft is a periodic function of time. Under both perturbations, we show that the system exhibits a transient chaotic behavior by means of the Melnikov method. This method gives us an analytical criterion for heteroclinic chaos in terms of the system parameters which is numerically contrasted. We also show that some periodic orbits survive for perturbation small enough. © 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.