Equilibria in an accelerated three-body problem

The general three-body problem is investigated with the addition of a fixed external force applied to one of the masses. It is firstly demonstrated that the centre-of-mass of the three-body system accelerates. Then, it is demonstrated that only a single, unstable, collinear equilibrium solution exit...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Celestial mechanics and dynamical astronomy 2023-12, Vol.135 (6), p.55, Article 55
Main Author: McInnes, Colin R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aerospace Technology and Astronautics
Asteroids
Astrophysics and Astroparticles
Classical Mechanics
Configurations
Controllability
Dynamical Systems and Ergodic Theory
Equilibrium
Geophysics/Geodesy
Orbits
Original Article
Physics
Physics and Astronomy
Three body problem
Citations: Items that this one cites
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The general three-body problem is investigated with the addition of a fixed external force applied to one of the masses. It is firstly demonstrated that the centre-of-mass of the three-body system accelerates. Then, it is demonstrated that only a single, unstable, collinear equilibrium solution exits in the accelerating frame. While unstable, it is also demonstrated that this single equilibrium configuration is in principle controllable using additional control accelerations distributed between the masses. Potential applications of such an accelerated collinear equilibrium configuration are discussed for the active manoeuvring of chains of small asteroids for space resource utilisation.
ISSN:0923-2958
1572-9478
DOI:10.1007/s10569-023-10166-z