Publisher's Synopsis
This publication contains the proceedings of the meetings of the COSPAR Technical Panel on Satellite Dynamics which took place during the 31st Cospar Scientific Assembly held in Birmingham (UK) in July 1996. The 20 papers cover a variety of topics relating mainly to satellite orbit determination and analysis. A group of papers discusses orbit determination of low earth orbiters, in particular earth observation and research missions having high accuracy and using various various types of tracking support (data relay satellites, PRARE, laser, GPS). Two papers on geostationary orbits describe a project for their use in time-transfer and their evolution with time. Modelling problems associated with surface forces are analysed by a number of authors (an overview paper on Lageos perturbation models; the impact of surface forces on gravity models covering penumbra affects, numerical integration and attitude motion). One paper describes a visualisation tool for optimising the use of navigation data for certain science missions.
