Related papers: Why do Earth satellites stay up?
Private space companies are increasingly commercializing near-earth space. Some estimates show that more than 100,000 satellites may orbit the Earth by 2030. This increase in the number of satellites has many consequences for science,…
Many exoplanets in close-in orbits are observed to have relatively high eccentricities and large stellar obliquities. We explore the possibility that these result from planet-planet scattering by studying the dynamical outcomes from a large…
The appearance of highly anisotropic planes of satellites around the Milky Way and other galaxies was long considered a challenge to the standard cosmological model. Some recent simulations have found flattened satellite systems to be…
Since the formulation of the problem by Newton, and during three centuries, astronomers and mathematicians have sought to demonstrate the stability of the Solar System. Thanks to the numerical experiments of the last two decades, we know…
The coupled attitude and orbit dynamics of solar sails is studied. The shape of the sail is a simplified quasi-rhombic-pyramid that provides the structure helio-stablility properties. After adimensionalisation, the system is put in the form…
The aim of this work is to highlight the crucial role that orbital resonances associated with solar radiation pressure can have in Low Earth Orbit. We review the corresponding literature, and provide an analytical tool to estimate the…
In this study, the potential locations of asteroidal small satellites (also called moonlets) with quasi-circular mutual orbit are analyzed. For the motion of the moonlets, only the solar gravity perturbation and the primary's 2nd…
Let m(i) be the mass of i-th planet and M be the Solar mass. From astronomical data it is known that ratios r(i)=m(i)/(m(i)+M) are of order 10^(-3)-10^(-6) for all planets. The same is true for all satellites of heavy planets. These results…
The increasing number of Anthropogenic Space Objects (ASOs) in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) poses a threat to the safety and sustainability of the space environment. Multiple companies are planning to launch large constellations of hundreds or…
Two types of stability boundaries exist for any planetary system consisting of one star and two planets. Lagrange stability requires that the planets remain bound to the star, conserves the ordering of the distance from the star, and limits…
Our investigation is motivated by the recent discovery of asteroids orbiting the Sun and simultaneously staying near one of the Solar System planets for a long time. This regime of motion is usually called the quasi-satellite regime, since…
Our planet has one permanently bound satellite -the Moon-, a likely large number of mini-moons or transient irregular natural satellites, and three temporary natural retrograde satellites or quasi-satellites. These quasi-moons -(164207)…
Planets in the habitable zone of lower-mass stars are often assumed to be in a state of tidally synchronized rotation, which would considerably affect their putative habitability. Although thermal tides cause Venus to rotate retrogradely,…
The orbits of stars in galaxies are generically chaotic: the chaotic behavior arises in part from the intrinsically grainy nature of a potential that is composed of point masses. Even if the potential is assumed to be smooth, however,…
Many features of the outer solar system are replicated in numerical simulations if the giant planets undergo an orbital instability that ejects one or more ice giants. During this instability, Jupiter and Saturn's orbits diverge, crossing…
We consider a nearly free falling Earth satellite where atomic wave interferometers are tied to a telescope pointing towards a faraway star. They measure the acceleration and the rotation relatively to the local inertial frame. We calculate…
Due to the chaotic nature of the Solar System, the question of its dynamic long-term stability can only be answered in a statistical sense, e.g. based on numerical ensemble integrations of nearby orbits. Destabilization, including…
The conjecture is considered that every body induces the wave field which imposes oscillations on the gravitational potential of a body. The function for oscillations is chosen to prevent the gravitational collapse of the matter at the…
We have recently shown (Ibata et al. 2014) that pairs of satellite galaxies located diametrically opposite each other around their host possess predominantly anti-correlated velocities. This is consistent with a scenario in which $\sim 50$%…
The apparent regularity of the motion of the giant planets of our solar system suggested for decades that said planets formed onto orbits similar to the current ones and that nothing dramatic ever happened during their lifetime. The…