Lessons learned from the dynamical behaviour of orbiting satellites

This paper contains the contents of the 20th John V. Breakwell Memorial Lecture delivered on October 1st, 2014, during the International Astronautical Congress in Toronto, Canada. The paper presents a few valuable and interesting lessons offered by unexpected dynamical performances of orbiting satellites. Sometimes, the observed dynamical behaviour appears to be 'anomalous', at least to an extent, when it does not conform to our a priori expectations. Subsequently, considerable effort is often required to properly understand that the observed behaviour is in fact perfectly natural from a dynamical point of view. The paper presents four examples from the author׳s background in the field of operational satellite flight dynamics. The first three events belong to the field of attitude dynamics of spin-stabilized satellites and the final case deals with the precise deep-space trajectory navigation of ESA׳s Rosetta satellite.