General closed-form expressions for the mutual gravitational potential, resultant, and torque acting upon a rigid tethered system are derived when moving in a nonuniform gravity field produced by an attracting body with revolution symmetry, such that an arbitrary number of zonal harmonics is considered. The final expressions are series expansions in two small parameters related to the reference radius of the primary and the length of the tether, respectively, each of which are scaled by the mutual distance between their centers of mass. A few numerical experiments are performed to study the convergence behavior of the final expressions and conclude that, for high-precision applications, it might be necessary to take into account additional perturbation terms, which come from the mutual two-body interaction. Presented as Paper AAS 2014-444 at the 24th AAS-AIAA Space Flight Mechanics Meetings, Santa Fe, NM, 26-30 January 2014
Gravitational Actions upon Tethers in Nonuniform Gravity Fields with Revolution Symmetry
2015
Article (Journal)
English
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