Methods in simulating gravitational field of the small celestial bodies of complex shapes on the 67P/Churyumov—Gerasimenko comet example
Authors: Zhojin Li, Klishin A.N., Koryanov V.V., Kolesnikova D.S.
Published in issue: #11(143)/2023
DOI: 10.18698/2308-6033-2023-11-2319
Category: Aviation and Rocket-Space Engineering | Chapter: Aircraft Dynamics, Ballistics, Motion Control
Determining the spacecraft motion parameters in vicinity to surface of a celestial body of the non-spherical shape is being actively studied, and it is a complex task due to a problem in describing the gravitational field of such a body. The paper analyzes various approaches to simulating gravitational field of bodies of the complex shape including the methods of spherical functions, minimum ambient sphere, minimum ambient ellipsoid and the polyhedral method. The models used were comparatively analyzed, and an approach was proposed based on introducing a neural network to optimize calculation by approximating the data obtained by the polyhedron method. Simulation results are presented to describe the gravitational field of the 67P/Churyumov — Gerasimenko short-period comet, they are illustrated with figures and tables. The paper proposes recommendations to using one or another method in simulating the classical two-body problem.
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