FROZEN ORBITS AROUND EUROPA

Abstract

Low-altitude, near-polar orbits are very desirable for scientific missions to study the natural satellites of the planets of the Solar System, such as Europa, that is one of the natural satellites of Jupiter. The problem is analyzed considering that an artificial satellite is orbiting Europa and that this spacecraft is perturbed by the nonuniform distribution of mass of the planetary satellite (J(2), J(3), C-22) and by the gravitational attraction of the third-body. We present an analytical theory using the averaged model and applications were done by performing numerical integrations of the analytical equations developed. Using the averaged method, several frozen orbits were obtained. Some of them has low inclination, low altitude and long lifetime. Numerical simulations are performed using the software Mercury, to compare the results obtained using the analytical theory.