Chaotic transport of navigation satellites

Abstract

Navigation satellites are known from numerical studies to reside in a dynamically sensitive environment, which may be of profound importance for their long-term sustainability. We derive the fundamental Hamiltonian of GNSS dynamics and show analytically that near-circular trajectories lie in the neighborhood of a Normally Hyperbolic Invariant Manifold (NHIM), which is the primary source of hyperbolicity. Quasi-circular orbits escape through chaotic transport, regulated by the NHIM's stable and unstable manifolds, following a power-law escape time distribution $P(t)\sim t^{-\alpha }$, with $\alpha \sim 0.8-1.5$. Our study is highly relevant for the design of satellite disposal trajectories, using manifold dynamics.

Accepted for publication in Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science

References in corpus (5)

• Satellite dynamics on the Laplace surface
• Chaos in navigation satellite orbits caused by the perturbed motion of the Moon
• Dynamical cartography of Earth satellite orbits
• Towards a sustainable exploitation of the geosynchronous orbital region
• Medium Earth Orbit dynamical survey and its use in passive debris removal