English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

Fast and precise propagation of satellite orbits is required for missiondesign, orbit determination and payload data analysis. We present a method toimprove the computational performance of numerical propagators andsimultaneously maintain the accuracy level required by any particularapplication. This is achieved by determining the positional accuracy needed andthe corresponding acceptable error in acceleration on the basis of the missionrequirements, removing those perturbation forces whose effect is negligiblecompared to the accuracy requirement, implementing an efficient and precisealgorithm for the harmonic synthesis of the geopotential gradient (i.e., thegravitational acceleration) and adjusting the tolerance of the numericalpropagator to achieve the prescribed accuracy level with minimum cost. Inparticular, to achieve the optimum balance between accuracy and computationalperformance, the number of geopotential spherical harmonics to retain isadjusted during the integration on the basis of the accuracy requirement. Thecontribution of high-order harmonics decays rapidly with altitude, so theminimum expansion degree meeting the target accuracy decreases with height. Theoptimum degree for each altitude is determined by making the truncation errorof the harmonic synthesis equal to the admissible acceleration error. Thispaper presents a detailed description of the technique and test caseshighlighting its accuracy and efficiency.

A Method for Accurate and Efficient Propagation of Satellite Orbits: A Case Study for a Molniya Orbit