Effect of initial orbital elements on orbital evolution of MEO BDS-3 satellite with considering the lunisolar secular resonance

Abstract

This paper investigates the effect of initial orbital elements on the orbital evolution of the Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) satellites of the third generation of the BEIDOU Navigation Satellite System (BDS-3), considering the lunisolar secular resonance. The long-term evolution of 24 BDS-3 MEO satellites without active control is simulated by the double-averaged Hamiltonian dynamical model. The simulation results show that some of the satellites could enter the Earth's atmosphere as their eccentricities increase. On the contrary, some other satellites have stable orbits during the long-term evolution. The effects of different e0, i0, ω0, and Ω0 on the long-term evolution are investigated, respectively. The results show that when e0 is larger, the eccentricity reaches emax faster; and the variations in e0 or ω0 don't change the values of the resonance angle in resonance. However, the change of i0 and Ω0 will change the values of the resonance angle in resonance. The maximum eccentricity method is used to study the influences of different initial conditions (including initial orbital elements and initial epoch) on the long-term evolution of MEO satellites. The results show that the changes of i0, omega0, and Omega0 affect the distribution of emax in the (Ω0, ω0) space. In the (Ω0, ω0) space, if the initial ΩM changes, the shape of the emax map changes, but the maximum value of emax barely changes. Apart from the region with large values of emax in the (Ω0, ω0) space, there also exist regions with small values of emax, where the differences between emax and e0 are very small.