Resumen de Chaos and its control in the libration motion of a non-rigid spacecraf with visocus drag in circular orbit

Jesús Francisco Palacián Subiela , Víctor Lanchares Barrasa , Ana Isabel Pascual Lería , José Pablo Salas Ilarraza , Manuel Iñarrea Las Heras

• We study the libration motion dynamics of an asymmetric spacecraft in circular orbit under the influence of a gravity gradient torque. The spacecraft is pertubed by a small aerodynamic drag torque proportional to the angular velocity of the body about its mass center. We also suppose that one of the moments of inertia of the spacecraft is a periodic function of time. Under both perturbations, we show that the system exhibits a transient chaotic behavior by means of the melnikov method. This method gives us an analytical criterion for heteroclinic chaos in terms of the system parameters. This criterion is numerically contrasted. We show also show that some periodic orbits survive for perturbation small enough. Finally, we apply some feedback methods of chaos control to initially-irregular libration motions in order to remove their chaotic behaviors and obtain periodic motions.