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Descripción
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| Electrodynamic tethers could be used in some missions to outer planets as an interesting alternative to produce the required level of onboard energy. Taking Jupiter as example two different scenarios can be found associated to the smallness of the gravity gradient due to the small Jovian density. Close to the planet, tethers aligned with the local Jovian vertical can be stabilized with help of the gravity gradient with tether tensions which are small but sufficient for some applications. However, when the distance increases the contribution of the gravity gradient to the tether tension decreases quickly and the stability of the system is jeopardized. In such a case fast rotating tethers provide the required level of tension due to the centrifugal forces yielded by the tether angular rate while keeping the advantages that this technology offer in the obtaining of onboard energy. Standard artificial satellites are relatively small structures and their attitude dynamics can be studied independently of the orbital motion of their center of mass: for the most important operations the corresponding equations of motion can be decoupled. On the contrary, for large structures as solar sails or long tethered satellites the attitude problem not always becomes de- coupled from the orbital one, and the rotational- translational motion must be studied as a whole. However, the roto- translational motion may admit some simplification for specific problems. That is the case of fast rotating tethers. In this paper we derive the equations of motion of a rotating tethered satellite in the Hill problem approximation, and show how the averaged equations over the tether¿s (fast) rotation angle decouple the orbital and attitude dynamics. We discuss how the tether¿s length parametrizes the problem and modifies the position of the collinear points. Finally, for the particular case of a tethered satellite continuously rotating in a plane parallel to the equatorial plane of the central body, which is an equilibrium of the averaged roto-translational problem, we show that unstable periodic orbits around the central body may be stabilized for certain lengths of the tether. | |
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Internacional
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Si |
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JCR del ISI
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No |
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Título de la revista
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Monografías de la Real Academia de Ciencias de Zaragoza |
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ISSN
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1132-6360 |
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Factor de impacto JCR
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0 |
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Información de impacto
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Volumen
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32 |
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DOI
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Número de revista
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0 |
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Desde la página
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75 |
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83 |
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Mes
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