Date of Award

12-1990

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Astronautical Engineering

Department

Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics

First Advisor

William Wiesel, PhD

Abstract

Orbits about the Martian moons, Phobos and Deimos, previously found to be stable by the Poincare surface of section technique in a restricted three- body system, were investigated with non-zero eccentricity of the moons added to the dynamics of the planar four-body system (Mars, moon sun, artificial satellite). Although not strictly applicable to this case, the surface of section technique was used to verify whether or not the previously found stable orbits were realistic when a real world perturbation was added to the system dynamics. The surface of section technique involves the numerical integration of several orbits with the same initial value of the Hamiltonian based on matching the angular rates of the orbit and moon with respect to Mars. Apoapsis and periapsis points of the orbits were plotted in the two-dimensional configuration space. Stable orbits were found when the points formed regions which are bounded; chaotic orbits were indicated by random points.

AFIT Designator

AFIT-GA-ENY-90D-1

DTIC Accession Number

ADA230473

Comments

The author's Vita page is omitted.

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