[Space Geodesy] Perturbation Theory

Motivation

The perturbation theory is to solve initial value problem. In other words through perturbation theory we could recover the satellite location or orbit.

There are mainly two categories of perturbation theory:

• General perturbation theory: find the approximated solution analytically. By the end of general perturbation, we can get the derivative of keplerian orbital elements w.r.t time, thus we can recover the location of satellite by integration and provided the integration.
• Special perturbation theory: find the approximated solution numerically. By the end of special perturbation, r(t) is writen as $$r(t) = \sum_{i = 1}^q a_q(t - t_0)^q$$ . Notice that the coefficient in above formula should be provided in advance.

General Perturbation Theory

• Keplerian element is a function of the position and velocity vector:
  I=I(r⃗ (t