Research of chaotic motion of the spacecraft with a tether making small oscillations about a local vertical

Аuthors

Ledkov A. S.^*, Dyukov D. I.^**

Samara National Research University named after Academician S.P. Korolev, 34, Moskovskoye shosse, Samara, 443086, Russia

*e-mail: ledkov@inbox.ru
**e-mail: dmitry_dyukov@mail.ru

Abstract

Mechanical system consisting of a spacecraft, a weightless elastic tether and a payload is investigated in this paper. The spacecraft is considered as a rigid body, and the payload – as a material point. Chaotic motion of the spacecraft in case of a vertical tether and in case of the presence of small oscillations of the tether in neighborhood of steady radial state is compared. It is shown that existence of small oscillations leads to increasing of a chaotic layer thickness and to fuzzying of regular trajectories on Poincare's sections, but doesn't lead to quality change of a pattern received for the case of vertical tether. Motion of spacecraft in case of slack tether is studied. It is shown that existence of sections of the free motion of the tether and the payload leads to chaotization of spatial motion of the spacecraft.

Keywords:

space tether system; circle orbit; chaos; bifurcation; Poincare's sections

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