Before motion in the small body environment is studied it is first necessary to define this environment. There exist many different scientific taxonomies for asteroids and comets, and we refer the interested reader to the “Asteroids and Comets” series of texts for a larger view of these bodies [48, 102, 14, 197, 41]. As our focus is on the dynamics of vehicles at these bodies, only a sub-set of all the properties of these bodies needs to be specified. Thus in the following we describe the orbits of small bodies in the solar system, the rotations of these bodies, their gravitational fields and shapes, and the forces that act on a spacecraft or particle in their vicinity.
Modeling Small Body Environments
Springer Praxis Books (formerly: Springer-Praxis Series)
2012-03-20
37 pages
Article/Chapter (Book)
Electronic Resource
English
Orbit Period , Small Body , Gravitational Potential , Shape Model , Solar Radiation Pressure Engineering , Aerospace Technology and Astronautics , Space Sciences (including Extraterrestrial Physics, Space Exploration and Astronautics) , Geophysics/Geodesy , Vibration, Dynamical Systems, Control , Classical Mechanics , Automotive Engineering