EXPLORATION OF THE STRUCTURE OF THE WEB OF COMMENSURABILITIES WITHIN THE MEO AND GTO REGIONS

We deal with the structure of the web of commensurabilities in the MEO and GTO regions, in a model accounting for the non spherical shape of the Earth, the luni-solar perturbations and the solar radiation pressure. In particular, we study to what extent the change of initial parameters of storage orbits (namely and mainly the semi-major axis and the eccentricity), can affect the long term stability of these orbits over very long time scales (typically, one century). The study is based on the numerical integration of the averaged equations of motion, with a semi-analytic model suitable for all dynamical configurations that has been approved to be the reference one for the French Space Operations Act (through the dedicated software STELA and its Fortran prototype).