Astronomy & Celestial Mechanics
the sky, computed
Concept

Atmospheric drag — where it appears

The force a satellite feels from the residual gas at orbital altitude, falling off with height as fast as the density does. It removes orbital energy, which lowers the orbit and speeds the satellite up, and it acts through the centre of pressure rather than the centre of mass.

Named by 5 essays across one field — each of them below, with the objects they name alongside it.

Down by 280 km, and faster by 164 m/s. A circular orbit at 400 km with a ballistic coefficient of 100 kg/m², integrated down to 120 km through a tabulated atmosphere at solar minimum and solar maximum. At solar min it takes 1.2 years; at solar max it takes 147 days — a factor of 2.9 for the same satellite in the same orbit, decided by an eleven-year cycle nobody controls. The rising curves are the orbital speed on the right-hand scale, and they are the point: the drag force is opposite the motion and takes energy out, and the body goes faster, from 7673 to 7836 m/s. There is no contradiction in it. The specific energy is −μ/2a, so removing energy shrinks a, and the circular speed √(μ/a) rises when a falls; the kinetic energy gained is exactly half the potential energy lost, and the other half is what the air took. Every point on every curve was integrated from da/dt = −(ρ/β)√(μa), and the speed at each point is √(μ/a) at that point rather than a separate model.

An orbit that speeds up as it is slowed down

Drag takes energy out of a satellite and the satellite goes faster. There is no paradox in it, only a sign — and the same sign makes a re-entry date a space-weather forecast rather than an orbital computation, which is why Skylab was predicted for 1983 and came down in 1979.

spaceflight · Atmospheric drag An oscillation that does not matter, on a ramp that does. Stored angular momentum in a reaction wheel over 160 days at 550 kilometres, with a capacity of 25 newton metre seconds. The total environmental torque is 1.75e-4 newton metres, of which 35 per cent is taken to survive averaging over an orbit. The fast oscillation is the part that does not survive: it has the 95.6-minute orbital period, reaches 0.10 newton metre seconds, and returns to where it started every revolution, so it consumes capacity and nothing else. The ramp under it is the secular part, and its slope measured between two instants a whole number of orbits apart is 6.117e-5 newton metres, which is the secular torque and is how the figure checks itself. The wheel fills in 4.7 days and has to be emptied 33 times in the span drawn. Every attitude-controlled spacecraft in the collection lives on this sawtooth, and the vertical drops are the only part of it that costs anything: the store can be moved between wheels for nothing, and taken out of the vehicle only by pushing against something outside it.

The spin that has to be put somewhere

A spacecraft holding an attitude is not resisting a force. It is absorbing a slow, one-directional trickle of angular momentum from the gradient of gravity across its own body, from sunlight, from the last of the atmosphere — and every store it has for that trickle fills up.

spaceflight · Attitude control Removals a year, set almost entirely by one percentage. The number of derelicts that must be removed each year to hold a shell at 50 per cent of its critical count, against the fraction of disposals that fail, for a 650-satellite constellation at 800, 1000, 1200 km. Because a dead satellite at these heights stays up for centuries, almost every failure has to be removed by hand, and the removal rate is very nearly the failure rate: at 1200 km, 13 a year if ninety per cent of disposals succeed and 1.3 if ninety-nine do. The removal budget is therefore set by an engineering reliability rather than by the orbital environment, and a percentage point of reliability is worth a fixed number of removal missions a year for as long as the constellation flies. Five removals a year is enough for this shell only above 96.2 per cent reliability.

A removal rate set by one percentage

How many dead satellites have to be taken out of a high orbit each year is decided less by the orbit than by how often a satellite fails to dispose of itself. Above eight hundred kilometres a derelict stays for centuries, so the removal rate needed to keep a shell stable is very nearly the failure rate, and moving disposal reliability from ninety per cent to ninety-nine cuts the work tenfold.

spaceflight · Orbital debris Two satellites moved apart by the attitude they hold. The along-track separation of two identical 5 kg satellites at 475 km, starting together, when one flies broadside to the airflow and the other edge-on for 15 days and then they swap, so that their relative drift ends at zero. The separation grows quadratically and then levels off. At solar minimum the manoeuvre moves the pair 2,797 km apart; mid-cycle 8,299; at solar maximum 24,620 — 206° of the orbit's 43,060 km circumference. No propellant is spent; the same command produces a tenfold different result depending on the state of the Sun.

A rendezvous paid for in air

Two satellites in the same low orbit can be moved along it relative to each other with no propellant at all, by turning one broadside to the thin air and the other edge-on. The draggier one sinks and speeds up, the gap grows as the square of the time, and swapping attitudes halfway brings the drift back to zero. The cost moves from fuel to time, to altitude, and to knowing an atmosphere that changes tenfold with the Sun.

spaceflight · Rendezvous How far a change of attitude moves a satellite before the encounter. The along-track shift a 5-kg satellite achieves by switching from 0.01 to 0.1 m² of frontal area when warned of a conjunction, against the warning time, at 400, 500, 600 km, between solar minimum (lower edge) and maximum (upper edge), logarithmic. The shift grows as the square of the time. In a day it is 26.1 to 156 km at 400 km; 3.9 to 39 km at 500 km; 0.6 to 10 km at 600 km. The dashed line is the 556 m needed to bring a 300-m position uncertainty's collision risk below one in ten thousand.

A dodge made of air

A small satellite with no thruster can still move along its orbit by turning broadside to the thin air, and the question is whether that is enough to get out of the way of debris. Below six hundred kilometres the answer, measured in distance, is easily yes: a day's warning buys kilometres when a few hundred metres would do. Measured in predictability it is no. The density of the air is forecast to about thirty per cent, so the dodge goes somewhere nobody, including the satellite's own operator, can say in advance to the precision the dodge was meant to achieve.

spaceflight · Rendezvous

Named alongside it

The objects these essays reach for when they reach for this one.

Ballistic coefficientDifferential dragOrbital debrisSatellite constellationSolar cycleActive debris removalAngular momentumAttitude controlCollision avoidanceCollision rateConjunction assessmentFeedback

All concepts