Higher-Order Corrections for Frozen Terminator Orbit Design

What is it about?

For a spacecraft to perform long-term observation of an asteroid, it is desirable to place the probe on a stable orbit around the asteroid. As the body's gravity is weak, other small forces such as the pressure of the Sunlight disturb the orbit significantly. Also, due to its irregular shape, we have to account for the non-uniform gravity field of the asteroid. Thus, stable orbit design around an asteroid is non-trivial. A candidate of such a stable orbit have been identified, which is called a terminator orbit. We propose corrections to the conventional definition of the terminator orbit so that the resulting orbits become more regular.

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