Deployment and retrieval of tethered satellite system under J2 perturbation and heating effect

Tethered satellite system is subject to a variety of perturbations from the geophysical environment and other planets, such as the J2 perturbation and heating effect. Those perturbations are likely to yield new dynamics of tethered satellite system during deployment and retrieval. However, the J2 perturbation and heating effect in studying the deployment and retrieval of tethered satellite have drawn little attention. This paper presents the effect of J2 perturbation on the deployment and retrieval of tethered satellite and gives the new dynamics with the heating effect taken into account. The viscoelastic tether is modeled as a series of elements with lumped masses, which yields a set of ordinary differential equations of motion having finite degrees of freedom by using Newton’s laws. The forces on the system are on the basis of the J2 perturbation and the thermal flux arising from the solar radiation, Earth’s infrared radiation as well as tether’s infrared radiation. The case studies show that the J2 perturbation has a great influence on the deployment process, which depends mainly on the magnitude of sliding friction force between tether and deployment device. The heating effect, however, gives rise to quite different dynamics during retrieval of a tethered satellite compared with that of a tethered satellite without heating effect.