Relative equilibria of tethered statellite systems and their stability for very stiff tethers

摘要

We study the existence and stability of the relative equilibria of systems of two satellites joined by a tether. Since tethers used in practice are very stiff we consider a stiff tether as a perturbation of inextensible tether. We show that the equaitons for relative equilibria and the stability conditions are continuous as stiff- inextensible tether. We obtain a numerical bifurcation diagram for a class of relative equilibria in the case of an inextensible tether.