A Hamiltonian Study Of The Stability and Bifurcations For The Satellite Problem

Abstract

We study the dynamics of a rigid body in a central gravitational field modeled as a Hamiltonian system with continuous rotational symmetries following the geometrical framework of Wang et al. Novelties of our work are the use the Reduced Energy Momentum for the stability analysis and the treatment of axisymmetric bodies. We explicitly show the existence of new relative equilibria and study their stability and bifurcation patterns.