A strong relationship exists between eccentricity and the potential for an orbit with a mean motion commensurability to the Earth's rotation rate to be chaotic. These complex motions can significantly impact the east-west stationkeeping process for maintaining the repeating groundtrack property of a commensurate orbit. The focus of the current study is to investigate orbits with characteristics that are similar to GPS satellites except with modestly larger eccentricities. It will be shown that at eccentricities larger than approx .01 the chaotic regions become significant, and the need arises for a robust stable stationkeeping appraoch. Furthermore, the investigation will develop an analytical model for eccentricity and show the factors that contribute to its growth, thus increasing the probability of encountering chaotic motion during a typical satellite lifetime. These results are applied to selected GPS orbits. It is determined that if the initial eccentricity is sufficiently large, then the traditional SK methods can destabilize and a more robust technique is required.
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