Orbital stationkeeping

In astrodynamics, the orbital maneuvers made by thruster burns that are needed to keep a spacecraft in a particular assigned orbit are called orbital station-keeping.

For many Earth satellites the effects of the non-Keplerian forces, i.e. the deviations of the gravitational force of the Earth from that of a homogeneous sphere, gravitational forces from Sun/Moon, solar radiation pressure and air-drag, must be counteracted.

The deviation of Earth's gravity field from that of a homogeneous sphere and gravitational forces from Sun/Moon will in general perturb the orbital plane. For a sun-synchronous orbit the precession of the orbital plane caused by the oblateness of the Earth is a desirable feature that is part of the mission design but the inclination change caused by the gravitational forces of Sun/Moon is undesirable. For geostationary spacecraft the inclination change caused by the gravitational forces of Sun/Moon must be counteracted by a rather large expense of fuel, as the inclination should be kept sufficiently small for the spacecraft to be tracked by a non-steerable antenna.

For spacecraft in low orbits the effects of atmospheric drag must often be compensated for. For some missions this is needed simply to avoid re-entry; for other missions, typically missions for which the orbit should be accurately synchronized with Earth rotation, this is necessary to avoid the orbital period shortening.

Solar radiation pressure will in general perturb the eccentricity (i.e. the eccentricity vector), see Orbital perturbation analysis (spacecraft). For some missions this must be actively counter-acted with manoeuvres. For geostationary spacecraft the eccentricity must be kept sufficiently small for a spacecraft to be tracked with a non-steerable antenna. Also for Earth observation spacecraft for which a very repetitive orbit with a fixed ground track is desirable, the eccentricity vector should be kept as fixed as possible. A large part of this compensation can be done by using a frozen orbit design, but for the fine control manoeuvres with thrusters are needed.

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