Long-term orbital propagation through differential algebra transfer maps and averaging semi-analytical approaches

Orbit perturbations are fundamental when analyzing the long-term evolution and stability of natural or artificial satellites. We propose the computation of transfer maps for repetitive dynamical systems as a novel approach to study the long-term evolution of satellite and space debris motion. We provide two examples of this technique, the evolution of high area-to-mass ratio spacecraft under solar radiation pressure and J<inf>2</inf>, and a sun-synchronous groundtrack repeating orbit with drag and J<inf>2</inf>. The results presented demonstrate the potentiality of the transfer maps for these problems. We furthermore compare this approach with averaging methods for the propagation of the orbital dynamics on the long-term, and suggest possibilities to combine differential algebra based methods with orbital elements averaging.