Dynamic Behavior of an Orbiter around Europa

Abstract

The dynamics of an orbiter close to a planetary satellite are known to be unstable from a wide range of inclinations encompassing polar orbits. Taking the Jupiter-Europa system as our model, we use numerically determined periodic orbits to investigate the stability of motion over three-dimensional space for this problem. We have found that the change in stability is produced by a bifurcation in phase space. At a certain critical inclination, almost circular periodic orbits change their stability character to instability and new families of (stable) elliptic orbits appear. Copyright © 2004 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc. All rights reserved.