Kinematics effects of atmospheric friction in spacecraft flybys

Abstract

Gravity assist manoeuvres are one of the most succesful techniques in astrodynamics. In these trajectories the spacecraft comes very close to the surface of the Earth, or other Solar system planets or moons, and, as a consequence, it experiences the effect of atmospheric friction by the outer layers of the Earth's atmosphere or ionosphere. In this paper we analyze a standard atmospheric model to estimate the density profile during the two Galileo flybys, the NEAR and the Juno flyby. We show that, even allowing for a margin of uncertainty in the spacecraft cross-section and the drag coefficient, the observed -8 mm/sec anomalous velocity decrease during the second Galileo flyby of December, 8th, 1992 cannot be attributed only to atmospheric friction. On the other hand, for perigees on the border between the termosphere and the exosphere the friction only accounts for a fraction of a millimeter per second in the final asymptotic velocity.

5 figures, 3 tables

References in corpus (5)

• The Energy Transfer Process in Planetary Flybys
• Modelling the flyby anomalies using a modification of inertia
• The flyby anomaly: A case for strong gravitomagnetism ?
• Resolving Spacecraft Earth-Flyby Anomalies with Measured Light Speed Anisotropy
• On the effect of ocean tides and tesseral harmonics on spacecraft flybys of the Earth

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Anomalous accelerations in spacecraft flybys of the Earth