AAS 97-691
GEOPOTENTIAL PERTURBATIONS - AN EFFICIENT ALGORITH
E. Wnuk and I. Wytrzyszczak - Astronomical Observatory of A. Mickiewicz University, Poland
Abstract
The paper presents the results of applying the first order theory based on the expansion of the geopotential in series of the lumped coefficients (Wnuk, 1988) and including an appropriate (for a given orbit) number of zonal and tesseral harmonics coefficients. The theory is valid for the range of eccentricities from 0 to 0.8 and all inclinations except the critical one, and is numerically stable up to 360 degree and order of the geopotential coefficients. Comparing our analytical theory with numerical integration we show the critical values of the eccentricity and the inclination when the non-singular elements have to be used to save a given accuracy level. For a given kind of orbit the optimum number of geopotential harmonics is estimated. Resulting series are very effective and easy for parallelization.
INVITED SESSION