Investigation on a Doubly-Averaged Model for the Molniya Satellites Orbits

Abstract: The aim of this work is to investigate the lunisolar perturbations affecting the long-term dynamics of a Molniya satellite. Some numerical experiments on the doubly-averaged model, including the expansion of the lunisolar disturbing functions up to the third order, are carried out in order to detect the terms dominating the long-term evolution. The analysis focuses on the following significant indicators: the amplitude of the harmonic coefficients, the periods of the arguments involved and, in particular, the ratio between the amplitudes and the corresponding frequency. The results show that the second-order lunisolar perturbation gives the dominant contribution to the long-term dynamics. The second part of this work aims to study the resonant regions associated to the dominant terms identified so far by using both the ideal resonance model and an alternative approach. The results obtained show when the standard method does not catch the main features of the dynamical structure of the resonant regions. Finally, the maximum overlapping region is identified in the proximity of the Molniya orbital environment.