MODEL OF REFERENCE ORBIT FOR SATELLITES CONSTELLATION

The current work will be focused upon the study of the effects of the earth’s gravitational field on the motion of an artificial satellite constellation and a computational model for this perturbation on the constellation orbit will be done; the earth’s gravitational field up to second zonal harmonics is considered. This perturbation make a drift for the orbital elements of satellite constellation that make continues coverage and lead to a shift of the whole constellation structure. The equations of motion under effects of oblatenees force are solved numerically by using Rung-Kotta method. The results show that this model has efficiency to compute the perturbations for satellite constellation which already congruent with observing data.