The orbital evolution of 2 binary asteroid systems based on Hamel’s variational integrators
Beijing Institute of Technology Press Co., LtdPeer-Reviewed Publication
With growing concerns over the impact threat of near-Earth small bodies and the utilization of space resources, the orbital evolution of binary asteroid systems has become an important subject in space science. When describing the full two-body dynamics of such systems, the gravitational potential of irregular bodies is determined by both their positions and attitudes, leading to coupling between translational and rotational motions, and the resulting model complexity significantly exceeds that of the classical two-body problem. Although existing numerical methods, such as explicit Runge–Kutta integrators, are widely used, they fail to preserve the symplectic structure and Lie group geometric properties of the system. In long-term simulations, key conserved quantities such as total energy and angular momentum are prone to numerical drift, severely undermining the long-term credibility of orbital predictions. While Lie group variational integrators can preserve geometric structure to a certain extent, their implicit equations are formulated on Lie group elements, which incurs substantial computational overhead. Therefore, how to construct a high-performance integration method that simultaneously achieves numerical accuracy, structure preservation, and computational efficiency has become a core challenge in the long-term evolutionary simulation of binary asteroid systems.
- Journal
- Space: Science & Technology