Jérôme Daquin (UNamur)

Title: Aspects of the secular dynamics of terrestrial orbits

Abstract: The threat raised by space debris has vivified long-term studies of terrestrial orbits. To apprehend the motion on long time scales, the Astrodynamics community has translated, deployed and adapted many tools coming from Dynamical System theory and Celestial Mechanics: from the construction of effective averaged models more amenable to analytical and/or numerical investigations to the construction of resonant normal forms, including modern dynamical chaos indicator to visualise the template of the phase-space.  Those efforts contributed to foster the `passive debris removal ideology’, where natural perturbations are ‘surfed’ rather than `counteracted’. In this talk, I will review and discuss some aspects of the long-term dynamics of terrestrial orbits, especially in the range of medium altitude. I will then present recent results obtained by the author and collaborators on the 2g+h lunisolar resonance where a (normally hyperbolic) manifold structure has been identified.