Solar Radiation Pressure Effects on Very High-eccentric Formation Flying

A real alternative to Lagrange point very low perturbed orbits, for universe observation missions, is high eccentric Earth orbits. Combination of high eccentricity and very large semi-major axis leads to orbits with an important part of flight time far from Earth and its perturbations. Modeling this particular relative motion is the scoop of this paper. Main perturbation in HEO orbits are solar radiation pressure (SRP) and lunisolar effects, but formations are mainly affected by SRP effects. The modellization of its effects is done in two ways. First we introduce the SRP effects in the equations of the relative acceleration. Second, we obtain explicit analytical expressions of the temporal evolution of the relative motion. Resulting expressions enable very fast computations. These models are used to study HEO missions. We focus on two different problems: estimation of thrust for station keeping and evaluation of collision risk. We also consider the influence of the difference of ratio surface/mass between satellites.