Influence of periodic lift and drag on the orbit of rectangular parallelepiped satellites
Arquivos
Data
2023-12-07
Autores
de Moraes, Rodolpho 
Murcia-Piñeros, Jhonathan
Tipo
Artigo
Título da Revista
ISSN da Revista
Título de Volume
Resumo
Satellites in Low Earth Orbits (LEO) are highly perturbed by the interaction with the atmosphere, the two components of this perturbation are lift and drag, which initially are a function of the satellite’s geometry, materials, atmosphere, and flow conditions. Due to the uncertainty in these values, the traditional model is to fix the coefficients along the orbit lifetime, without considering the changes in flow direction, product of the satellite attitude, and rotational dynamics. The purpose of the present paper is to analyse the influence of periodic variations of lift and drag on the satellite’s orbital elements, due to the satellite’s rotation at a constant angular velocity. Three parallelepiped solids were selected to model the satellite geometry, which is similar to the CubeSats standard. The aerodynamic coefficients are modelled using the panel method on free molecular flow, as a function of the angle of attack and the roll angle. The effects of periodic variations in drag result in secular perturbations in the orbital semi-major axis and eccentricity, with large differences at the lowest angular velocity. Lift, applied orthogonal to the plane orbit, affects the inclination at lower angular velocities because it keeps the magnitude and direction of this perturbation for a longer time. The novelty of the paper is the detection and quantification of the effects of periodic lift and drag in LEO on parallelepiped satellites.