Self-Maintenance Orbits Using The perturbations Due to Air Drag and Due to Earth's Oblateness

Abstract

The focus of this paper is the design of a self-maintenance orbit using two natural forces against each other. The effect of perturbations due to Earth's oblateness up to the third order on both the semi-major axis and eccentricity for a low Earth orbit satellite together with the perturbation due to air drag on the same orbital parameters were used, in order to create self-maintenance orbits. Numerical results were simulated for a low earth orbit satellite, which substantiates the applicability of the results.