Accounting for Solar Radiation Pressure in the Hamiltonian Normal Form of the Elliptic Restricted Three-Body Problem
Year: 2025
Type: preprint
Abstract: Hamiltonian normal forms allow for the analytical approximation of center manifold trajectories and their invariant manifolds through the separation of the saddle and center subspaces that make up the dynamics at the collinear libration points within the elliptic restricted three-body problem. The circular restricted three-body problem is a special case of the elliptic problem-- one that does not take into account the eccentricity of the true orbits of the primaries and thus provides a dynamical model of varying accuracy depending on the true anomaly of the primaries. This paper first shows that the normal forms of the elliptic problem offer nearly identical trajectory characterization capabilities to those of the circular problem and then demonstrates the difference in fidelity by comparing the circular and elliptic normal form representations of ephemeris data for the James Webb Space Telescope. Furthermore, methodology for including solar radiation pressure within the normal form is introduced, and the same ephemeris data is used to demonstrate the resulting increase in fidelity of the dynamical model.
Source: arXiv (Cornell University)
Authors: Hunsberger, Carson, Schwab, David, Eapen, Roshan, Singla, Puneet
Language: English
Subfield: Aerospace Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
Awards: G1523888516, G2320305696, G8289759875
OpenAlex ID: W4417035020