Acta Astronautica 67 (2010) 845853

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Acta Astronautica
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/actaastro

Deployment and retrieval of tethered satellite system under J2 perturbation and heating effect
B.S. Yu, D.P. Jin
Institute of Vibration Engineering Research, MOE Key Lab of Mechanics and Control for Aerospace Structures, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 210016 Nanjing, PR China

a r t i c l e in fo
Article history: Received 12 January 2010 Received in revised form 20 April 2010 Accepted 16 May 2010 Available online 11 June 2010 Keywords: Tethered satellite system Deployment and retrieval J2 perturbation Heating effect

abstract
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 nite degrees of freedom by using Newtons laws. The forces on the system are on the basis of the J2 perturbation and the thermal ux arising from the solar radiation, Earths infrared radiation as well as tethers infrared radiation. The case studies show that the J2 perturbation has a great inuence 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. & 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction The most important operations in the mission of a tethered satellite system are the deployment and the retrieval from a spaceship. The tethered satellite often exhibits an unstable motion around the radial equilibrium conguration, especially in the beginning of the deployment process and at the end of the retrieval process [13]. Hence, it is essential to understand and predict the dynamics of tethered satellite system during deployment and retrieval, especially one takes the complicated space environment, such as the J2 perturbation, the heating effect, the space debris, the aerodynamic drag, and the solar pressure [48], into account.

Corresponding author.

E-mail addresses: yu_bensong@163.com (B.S. Yu), jindp@nuaa.edu.cn (D.P. Jin). 0094-5765/$ - see front matter & 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.actaastro.2010.05.013

In aerospace sciences, intensive studies have been made for the dynamics of ying spacecraft subject to the gravity perturbation due to Earths irregular shape. For example, Hamel and de Lafontaine [9] studied the dynamics of formation ying spacecraft on a J2 perturbation elliptical orbit and analyzed the effect of J2 perturbation on the period orbit. Siouris [10] developed a gravity model applicable to ying spacecraft based on the traditional theory of Earths gravitation eld. Since 1990s has witnessed an increasing effort in the research of the J2 perturbation and the heating effect on tethered spacecraft system. Hurlbut and Potter [11], according to the theory of aerothermodynamics, stated the necessity of heating effect in studying the tethered satellite system. Krischke et al. [12] investigated numerically the atmospheric heating impact on the tether of a tethered re-entry capsule in a low-earth orbit and pointed out that it is necessary to provide effective protections to the tether against overheating. Yoshimura [13], by taking

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the J2 perturbation term of Earths gravitation eld into account, made a feasibility study for the orbit transfer of tethered satellite system in the debris-crowded circular orbit. Williams et al. [14] studied the heating effect on the tether of tethered aerocapture missions and shown that the aerodynamic heating on the tether is caused mainly by the friction between the air and the tether. The published works taking the J2 perturbation and heating effect into account, to authors knowledge, were focused on the orbit dynamics of tethered satellite system during state-keeping phase, i.e. wherein neither deployment nor retrieval occurs. If one controls the unstable motion during deployment and retrieval of a tethered satellite, he may wonder what dynamics of tethered satellite system the J2 perturbation and the heating effect bring about. The aim of this paper is to reveal the dynamics of tethered satellite system under the J2 perturbation and the heating effect so as to gain an insight into the complicated motion during deployment and retrieval. The study here, begins with the modeling of the continuous viscoelastic tether in Section 2, and then in Section 3 gives the expressions of forces on the system subject to the J2 perturbation, the solar radiation, Earths infrared radiation as well as tethers infrared radiation. Finally, a computation procedure is described in Section 4 to explain the complicated numerical simulation and the case studies are also discussed. 2. Modeling of tethered satellite system As shown in Fig. 1, the tethered satellite system of concern consists of a mother satellite M of mass m0 and a M sub-satellite S of mass m0 connected by a viscoelastic S tether of unstrained length l wound on a spool of deployment device in the satellites respectively. To describe the motion of tethered satellite system, an inertial frame of reference O-XYZ is established in Fig. 1 such that the X-axis points the direction of the ascending node from the center of the Earth O, the Z-axis is perpendicular to the orbital plane of tethered satellite

system marked by dashed line and Y-axis is determined by the right-hand rule. An orbital frame o-xyz is on the center of the mother satellite with the x-axis points the opposite direction of ight of the mother satellite, z-axis parallel to Z-axis, and y-axis also given by the right-hand rule. In Fig. 1, y represents the angle of inclination between the orbital plane and the equatorial plane marked by solid curve, and g is dened as the angle from the X-axis to suns rays. The accurate modeling of the system gives rise to a nonlinear dynamic system having innite degrees of freedom. To get an approximate but useful model, as illustrated in Fig. 2, the viscoelastic tether of linear density m is divided into n uniform elements with lumped masses. Obviously, if one takes larger enough number of elements, then the approximate model approaches to original one. The mass mi = mle of each element is lumped at the center of mass of the element marked by node i (i= 1,2,y,n), where le = l/n is unstrained length. According to Newtons laws, the differential equations of motion of the two satellites along with the tether stored therein are in the form
m0 mi nMS r MS m0 mi nMS g MS P MS RMS , MS MS

1 where the dot represents the derivative with respect to time t, r MS the position vector of the mother satellite M or the sub-satellite S with respect to the inertial frame of reference O-XYZ, nM(S) the number of nodes of tether contained in the corresponding satellite, g MS the gravitational acceleration of satellites due to Earths gravity, P MS and RM(S) the tether pulling force and the resultant external forces acting on the satellites, respectively. Note that if the magnitude of PM(S) is less than the sliding friction force FM(S) between the tether and the deployment device, i.e. 9PM(S)9rFM(S), the system is in the state-keeping phase in which neither deployment nor retrieval is occurred. For convenient expression, let us mark the mother satellite M with node 0, and the sub-satellite S with node n+ 1. As a result, equation (1), with m0n 1 m0 mi nMS substituted, is simplied as MS m0n 1 r 0n 1 m0n 1 g 0n 1 P 0n 1 R0n 1 : 2

In the same way, the differential equation of motion of the ith (i= nM +1,y,n nS) tether node outside satellites arrives at mi r i mi g i P i1,i P i 1,i Ri , 3

where r i is the position vector of the ith node with respect to the inertial frame of reference O-XYZ, g i the gravitational acceleration of the node i, Ri the resultant external forces acting on the node i, Pi 1,i and Pi + 1,i are the pulling

1 0

3 n n -2 n -1 n +1

Fig. 1. Tethered satellite system.

Fig. 2. A lumped mass model for system.

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forces applied by node i 1 and i+ 1 to the node i, respectively. Under assumption of the linear KelvinVoigt law of viscoelasticity of the tether, the magnitude of the pulling forces between two adjacent nodes, say node i 1 and i, can be expressed as _ Pi1,i EAZi1,i 1 aZ i1,i , 4

the solar radiation on the ith (i= nM + 2,y,n ns) segment of tether, that is between node i 1 and node i, facing the Sun [14]

fsr asr Is 9sinbi 9di li , i

where E is Youngs module of tether, A the section area of tether, Zi 1,i the elongation of the tether segment _ between node i 1 and node i, Z i1,i the elongation rate, a the dissipation constant of tether. During deployment of tether away from the mother satellite, especially, the reaction force acting by the mother satellite to the node nM +1 should be in the form [15] P0,nM 1 P0 m _M s2

where asr is the absorptivity for the solar radiation of tether, Is =1372 Wm 2 the solar incident radiation at the Earth, bi the angle between the tether segment and suns rays, di the diameter of the segment section, li the length of the segment. The thermal ux coming from Earths infrared radiation can be written as
4 fer aer sTe pdi li fi , i

Z0,nM 1 ,

whereas during retrieval of tether into the mother satellite _M P0,nM 1 P0 ms 2 Z0,nM 1 1, 6

where sM denotes the length of tether in the mother _M _M satellite. ms 2 Z0,nM 1 and ms 2 Z0,nM 1 1, as usual, are called as rocket term. In the same way, the reaction force acting by the sub-satellite to the node n nS can be obtained. It is evident that the number of degrees of freedom of tether satellite system remains unchanged over the statekeeping phase. When the tether is being deployed or retrieved, however, the number of node of the system is changing. This makes the tether satellite a time-varying one having 3(n nM nS + 2) degrees of freedom in the three-dimensional space. 3. Formulations of J2 perturbation and heating effect In the modeling above, the gravitational acceleration and the tether pulling force considered here are due to the J2 perturbation and the heating effect. The J2 perturbation is due to Earths irregular shape, in this case, the gravitation acceleration of any node become as following [10]
gi

where aer is the absorptivity for Earths infrared radiation of tether, s = 5.67 10 8 Wm 2K 4 the StefanBoltzmann constant, Te =288 K the equivalent blackbody temperature of the Earth. The view factor for the ith tether segment is dened as follows: !! 1 RE 1 RE fi arc sin   sin 2 arc sin   , 10 r ic  2 r ic  p where ric denotes the position vector of the center of the segment in the inertial reference frame O-XYZ. Because the tether radiates heat into space, the thermal ux yields

fout et sTi4 pdi li , i

11

where et is the emissivity of the tether, Ti the Kelvin temperature for the ith tether segment. Consequently, the total thermal ux of the ith tether segment arrives at

fi fsr fer fout : i i i

12

According to thermodynamic relation, the total thermal ux during an interval Dt should be equal to the amount of heat absorbed by the tether segment, i.e. fiDt =ctmiDTi with the specic heat capacity ct and the change in temperature DTi = Ti Tst, where Tst is the initial temperature of the tether segment. Using the coefcient of linear expansion al for one-dimensional continuum subject to heating effect to recast the unstrained length, one has lie 1 al DTi le : 13

mE
9r i 9
2

" 1

R2 E

# J P sin 2 2 2

9ri 9

ji

ri , 9r i 9

i 0,nM 1,. . .,nnS ,n 1,

Thus, the corresponding elongation of the ith tether segment is

7 where mE = 3.986 1014 m3/s2 is the gravitational parameter of the Earth, RE =6378 km Earths equatorial radius, J2 = 1.0826 10 3 the harmonic coefcient. P2 sinji denotes the Legendre polynomials of degree 2 that is a function of sin(ji), in which ji represents the geocentric latitude of node i. Eq. (7) indicates that the gravity perturbation to the system is related to the angle y of inclination between the orbital plane and the equatorial plane. The elongation of tether in space is signicantly affected by temperature that is linked with the solar radiation, Earths infrared radiation, and tethers infrared radiation. Those radiations can be determined with assistance of the thermal ux. According to the thermal radiation theory, it is easy to write out the thermal ux of

Zi1,i li =lie :

14

In the same way, one can determine the elongation between node 0 and node nM + 1, as well as between node n ns and node n+ 1. The equations of motion (2) and (3), with Eq. (14) substituted into Eq. (4), describe the dynamics of tethered satellite system under J2 perturbation and heating effect. 4. Case studies 4.1. Method of computation The gravity of each node depends not only on the corresponding altitude, but also on the geocentric latitude when the J2 perturbation is considered. And, it is necessary to check whether the tether segment faces the

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Sun or not. In addition, the angles between each tether segment and suns rays should be determined instantaneously because of Earths rotation around the Sun yields the direction of suns rays that points to the Earth would be changed continuously. Those complicated computations can be accomplished by the method of nite difference. The nite difference method, as usual, has been the techniques of choice in calculate the differential equation _ like M X C X KX F. As the tether is deploying or retrieving during task of tethered satellite system, the number of degrees of freedom of the tethered satellite system is variable. As a result, the system parameter matrices and the load vectors change with time. In this case, the normal nite difference method failed to solve the problem with the time-variability in system parameter matrices and load vectors. To solve such a problem, an improved nite difference method to calculate the responses of time-varying tethered satellite system is needed. Fig. 3 shows the computation ow chart of the timevarying system. At the end of each iteration, the change in the degrees of freedom of system is checked. Once the number of degrees of freedom is changed, the system parameter matrices and the initial iteration vectors should be rewritten in terms of the present node coordinates, in which new nodes are added or old redundant nodes disappear. The computation procedure will cycle continuously until the mission ends. In order to reveal the dynamics of system under J2 perturbation and heating effect, an in-plane motion of tethered satellite system is taken as an example. A set of parameters was taken as follows. The masses of mother satellite and sub-satellite were m0 1000 103 kg and M m0 1 103 kg, respectively. Youngs modulus of tether S was E= 50 GPa and the section area was A =10 6 m2. The linear density of the tether was m =5 10 3 kg/m and the

length was l= 10 km. The dissipation constant of tether was set as a = 0.05s, and n = 20. Assume that the mother satellite moves in a Keplerian elliptic orbit of perigee 350 km and apogee 650 km initially. The argument of perigee was o p=2 and the inclination of orbital plane was y p=3. The initial true anomaly of the mother satellite was set as n = p/6. 4.2. Effect of J2 perturbation In order to predict the effect of J2 perturbation on the system, the free deployment of the sub-satellite from the mother satellite is studied rst. The friction between tether and deployment device is neglected. The subsatellite, along local vertical direction, is located at 1 km away from the mother satellite, while the remaining tether is stored in the mother satellite. As the inclination of orbital plane was changed gradually from 0 to p/2, the duration of deployment tf was computed as shown in Fig. 4. One can see from Fig. 4 that the duration of deployment without J2 perturbation was always 1837.9 s, but there exists a small deviation from duration that takes

1842 1840
tf (s)

1838 1836 1834 1832 0.00 0.35 Without J2 perturbation With J2 perturbation 0.70 (rad) 1.05 1.40

Fig. 4. Duration of deployment versus inclination.

Start No Consider perturbations?

End Yes Is mission over? Add new nodes or delete redundant nodes

Yes

No No Analysis of perturbations Heating effect J 2 perturbation Other forces Analysis of every node Elongation i-1,i Pulling force Gravity All nodes

Does the number of degrees-of-freedom vary?

Yes

Computation

Fig. 3. The computation ow chart of time-varying system.

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the J2 perturbation into account. Once the inclination y was larger than 0.7 rad, the tethered satellite system would be at the high latitude of the Earth so that the gravity decrease yields the duration of deployment increased slightly. In fact, there exists unavoidable friction between the tether and the deployment device. To gain insight into the effect of friction on the deployment, the duration of deployment and the position deviation of sub-satellite at the end of deployment versus sliding friction force FM were computed as shown in Fig. 5 when y = p/3. One can see from Fig. 5(a) that the duration of deployment always goes up with increase of FM in range from 3.48 to 3.98 N until a limit value that makes the tether locked. Fig. 5(b) shows the corresponding deviation of the duration of deployment Dtf with and without the J2 perturbation with increase of sliding friction force. Fig. 5(b) shows that if FM was within 3.66 N, the deviation would within 10 s. It is observed from Fig. 5(b) that the deviation exceeded 100 s at FM =3.9 N, especially at FM = 3.92 and FM = 3.97 N, the deviation would burst from hundreds of seconds to 1380 and 2434 s. Fig. 5(c) shows the position varying of subsatellite at the end of deployment due to the sliding friction force FM in orbital frame. Those results are more intuitively shown in Fig. 5(d) for the position deviation Drf. One can see from Fig. 5(d) that if FM was within 3.88 N, the position deviation would within 10 m. However, the position deviation reached its maximum 245 m at FM = 3.92 N.

The results above show that the J2 perturbation has a great inuence on the deployment process, which depends mainly on the magnitude of sliding friction force between tether and deployment device.

4.3. Effect of heating effect The effect of heating effect on the dynamics of deployment and retrieval is studied in this section, in which the J2 perturbation and the friction are dropped out from the system rst and the mother satellite was located
l = 1.5x10 K
-5

-5

-1 -1

280

l = -1.5x10 K

260

T (K)

240

220

200

500

1000

1500

2000

t (s)
Fig. 6. Temperature of tether near sub-satellite versus time.

15000 12000

Without J2 perturbation With J2 perturbation

2500 2000

9000 6000 3000 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9

tf (s)

tf (s)

1500 1000 500 0 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9

FM (N)

FM (N)

4.0 3.9 3.8

250 200

FM (N)

rf (m)

150 100 50 0 3.5 3.6 3.7 FM (N) 3.8 3.9

Without J2 perturbation With J2 perturbation

3.7 3.6 3.5 -6 8 00 -6900 -7000 )

-7000 -7100

y(

m)

-7200 -7300

-7100

x(

Fig. 5. Effect of J2 perturbation on system: (a) duration of deployment versus sliding friction force, (b) deviation of duration of deployment, (c) position varying of sub-satellite at end of deployment, and (d) position deviation of sub-satellite.

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at the perigee initially. A set of parameters was set at ct =750 Jkg 1K 1, asr = 0.5, aer =0.5, et = 0.8, Tst = 288 K. Suns rays point to the Earth and the initial angle between X-axis and suns rays is g p=4. In the case of the free deployment of the sub-satellite from the mother satellite, the changes in temperature of tether near sub-satellite were computed as shown in Fig. 6 when al =1.5 10 5 and 1.5 10 5 K 1, respectively. Fig. 6 shows, at the end of deployment, that the temperature of tether near sub-satellite was about 205 K. Note that the thermal ux of the solar radiation fsr decreased to zero as the tethered satellite in

9000

sM (m)

6000 3000 0 0 400 800 1200 1600 2000

t (s)
Fig. 7. Length of tether in mother satellite versus time.

the shadow of the Sun. This makes the temperature fell sharply at 997 s. Fig. 7 shows the change of length of tether stored in mother satellite versus deployment time in the case of al = 0, 1.5 10 5 and 1.5 10 5 K 1, where the duration of deployment lasted for 1842, 1670 and 1900 s, respectively. The deployment processes of sub-satellite were depicted in the orbital frame as shown in Fig. 8, where the mother satellite was set at (0,0) in xy plane and the position of sub-satellite was plotted at an interval of deployment of 500 m. During initial deployment phase, as shown in Fig. 8(b), the nonsmooth conguration occurred, compared with that without heating effect shown in Fig. 8(a). This is because each segment was contracted at different rate due to different temperature so that gives rise to the tension of tether was so large that the gravity was unable to balance the tension completely. Fig. 8(c) shows the deployment process in the case of al = 1.5 10 5 K 1, which is different from the two former ones. The heating effect plays an important role during retrieval phase. Let the sub-satellite be located at 10 km bellow the mother satellite along its local vertical direction, the tether be stored in the sub-satellite when it was retrieved. Figs. 9 and 10 show the motion of sub-satellite retrieved at a uniform deployment speed of 10 m/s,

0 -1000 -2000 -3000 -4000

0 -1000 -2000 -3000 -4000

y (m)

-5000
-5000

y (m)

-7000

-6000

-5000

-4000

-3000

-2000

-1000

-5000

-4000

-3000

-2000

-1000

x (m)

x (m)

0 -1000 -2000

y (m)

-3000 -4000 -5000 -7000 -6000 -5000 -4000 -3000 -2000 -1000 0

x (m)
Fig. 8. Deployment processes of sub-satellite. (a) al = 0, (b) al = 1.5 10 5 K 1, and (c) al = 1.5 10 5 K 1

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wherein the solid curves denote the conguration of space tether, the dashed line the motion of sub-satellite. According to Fig. 9, the sub-satellite was retrieved in anticlockwise rotation around the mother satellite if without any heating effect. When the heating effect was taken into account in the case of al =1.5 10 5 K 1, the dynamics retrieved does not exhibit any determinate motion, namely, either of retrieval in clockwise and

anticlockwise directions would be occurred as shown in Fig. 10. To check the retrieval dynamics, a great number of numerical simulations were made under different values of the specic heat capacity. All the numerical results showed the sensitivity of motion of sub-satellite during retrieval to specic heat capacity of tether. It can be deduced that the heating effect would give rise to the abundant dynamics during retrieval.

300

2000 0 -2000
280 260

T (K)

y (m)

-4000 -6000 -8000 -10000 -8000 -6000 -4000 -2000 0 2000 4000 6000 8000

240 220 200 180

4000

8000

12000

16000

20000

t (s)
Fig. 11. Temperature of tether near sub-satellite versus time under J2 perturbation and heating effect.

x (m)
Fig. 9. Motion of sub-satellite during retrieval without heating effect.

2000 0 -2000

2000 0 -2000

y (m)

y (m)

-4000 -6000 -8000 -10000 -8000 -6000 -4000 -2000 0 2000 4000 6000 8000

-4000 -6000 -8000 -10000 -8000 -6000 -4000 -2000 0 2000 4000 6000 8000

x (m)

x (m)

2000 0 -2000

2000 0 -2000

y (m)

-4000 -6000 -8000 -10000 -8000 -6000 -4000 -2000 0 2000 4000 6000 8000

y (m)

-4000 -6000 -8000 -10000 -8000 -6000 -4000 -2000

2000

4000

6000

8000

x (m)

x (m)

Fig. 10. Motions of sub-satellite during retrieval under different specic heat capacities. (a) ct =750 J kg 1 K 1, (b) ct =755 J kg 1 K 1, (c) ct =760 J kg 1 K 1. and (d) ct =785 J kg 1 K 1.

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To well understand the dynamic behavior of system subject to both the J2 perturbation and heating effect, furthermore, the change in temperature of the tether near sub-satellite is shown in Fig. 11 when n = p/6, FM = 3.92 N and al =1.4 10 5 K 1. The period of temperature uctuation was approximately same as that of tether satellite system around the Earth of 5675 s. The length of tether in the mother satellite versus time and the deployment process of sub-satellite are shown in Figs. 12 and 13. One can see from Fig. 12 that the deployment velocity of tether was slow within 6000 s, and then became fast with the increase of gravity until the end of the deployment at 8736.6 s. Then, the motion of sub-satellite fell into statekeeping phase as shown in Fig. 14. The motion in Fig. 14

800 600

The 1st segment The 11th segment The 21st segment

P (N)

400 200 0 8730

8740

8750

8760

8770

8780

8790

t (s)
Fig. 15. Tensions of tether segments versus time.

9000

6000 3000 0 0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000

t (s)
Fig. 12. Length of tether in mother satellite versus time.

0 -1000 -2000

y (m)

-3000 -4000 -5000 -6000 -7000 -7000

-6000

-5000

-4000

-3000

-2000

-1000

x (m)
Fig. 13. Deployment process of sub-satellite under J2 perturbation and heating effect.

marked by dashed curve looks like one of a spring-mass pendulum. Note that a chaotic oscillation of the sub-satellite induced by an impulse can occur at moment of the end of deployment when the deployment velocity in radial direction of tether suddenly became zero. As a result, the tension of tether reached its maximum value that must be estimated in the design phase to avoid damage of tether. During oscillation phase, the tensions of the 1st, 11th, and 21st segment of tether are shown in Fig. 15. One can see from Fig. 15 that the tension of mid segment of tether increased smoothly to a maximum value at about 8761 s and then decreased till zero at 8785 s, while the tensions of the tether near mother satellite and sub-satellite increased alternately until the maximum values at 8757 and 8760 s, respectively. In addition, the tensions of all tether segments are shown in Fig. 16. As shown in Fig. 16(a), the tension was small at 8736 s for the unnished deployment. Since the tether segment near mother satellite was subject rstly to an impulse at end of deployment, the tension increased suddenly to 150 N at 8737 s as shown in Fig. 16(b). Then, the wave generated by the impulse motion arrived at the tether segment near sub-satellite so that the tension of which grew quickly to 235 N at 8740 s as shown in Fig. 16(c). Consequently, the tether was gradually stretched until reached maximum values of tension near mother satellite and sub-satellite of 740, 730 N at 8757 and 8760 s as shown in Figs. 16(d) and 16(e), respectively. Afterward, the tension of each segment of tether decreased till vanished at 8785 s as shown in Fig. 16(f). The similar motion followed would go on after the next impulse began. 5. Conclusions The paper presents a discrete dynamic model of the tethered satellite system having viscoelasticity of tether, rocket terms during deployment and retrieval as well as the J2 perturbation and the heating effect. The numerical simulations show that the dynamics of system under J2 perturbation depends not only on the orbit parameter such as the inclination of orbital plane, but also on systems parameter such as sliding friction force between tether and deployment device. The heating effect gives rise to differential motions of sub-satellite in clockwise and anticlockwise direction during retrieval. In addition, the tension of tether, the deployment and retrieval time are affected by heating effect. Therefore, the J2 perturbation

sM (m)

-1000 -2000 -3000 -4000

Deployment State-keeping

y (m)

-5000 -6000 -7000 -8000 -9000 -10000 -8000 -6000 -4000 -2000 0 2000 4000 6000 8000

x (m)
Fig. 14. Motion of sub-satellite during state-keeping phase under J2 perturbation and heating effect.

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853

12 9

160 120

P (N)

6 3 0 0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000

P (N)

80 40 0 0 2000 4000 6000 l (m) 8000 10000

l (m)
750 720

250 225

P (N)

175 150 125 0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000

P (N)

200

690 660 630 600 0 2000 4000 6000 l (m) 8000 10000

l (m)

750 725

1.0 0.5

P (N)

P (N)
0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000

700 675 650

0.0 -0.5 -1.0 0 2000 4000 6000 l (m) 8000 10000

l (m)

Fig. 16. Tensions of all tether segments. (a) t = 8736 s, (b) t= 8737 s, (c) t = 8740 s, (d) t= 8757 s, (e) t= 8760 s, and (f) t = 8785 s.

and heating effect cannot be ignored for analyzing the dynamics of tethered satellite system.

Acknowledgements This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 10672073 and 50875124. References
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