What's the quality of the matlab orbit propagation?

Do orbvital toolkits include earth, sun moon, planets?

Do they include earth gravity perturbations?

Do they include atmospheric drag? As function of lat-lon sun angle and solar F10.7?

Do they include variable drag as function of satellite shape and aspect?

Answer 1

[Aravind]

Hi @Mark,

The Aerospace Toolbox for Satellite Mission Analysis does support other planetary objects like Earth, the Sun, and the Moon. These can be added using the “ThirdBodyGravitySource” parameter of the “NumericalPropagator” for orbit propagation.

The gravity perturbations of Earth are typically captured using the Earth Gravity Models (EGM), with the latest being EGM2008. The “NumericalPropagator” in MATLAB supports this gravitational model through the “SphericalHarmonicModel” property.

According to the MathWorks documentation, if you set the “IncludeAtmosDrag” property to “true”, you can use the “AtmosFlags” property to configure how the atmospheric mass density is calculated, which will in turn affect the drag.

Variable drag for each satellite is accounted for by setting the physical properties of the satellites. These include mass, drag coefficient, drag area, etc. These properties can be set using the “physicalProperties” function in the Aerospace Toolbox.

You can find more information regarding the above functions at the following MathWorks documentation links:

1. Including effects of other planetary bodies - https://www.mathworks.com/help/aerotbx/ug/satellitescenario.numericalpropagator.html#mw_0546f09f-0da3-41cf-93aa-feb0ac59aa46.
2. Modeling gravity perturbations - https://www.mathworks.com/help/aerotbx/ug/matlabshared.satellitescenario.numericalpropagator.html#mw_4d45ab18-4201-45c0-9ea0-19888727e8e3.
3. Including Atmospheric drag - https://www.mathworks.com/help/aerotbx/ug/matlabshared.satellitescenario.numericalpropagator.html#mw_8d53056f-17be-49cb-add5-7e7b5a077293.
4. Variable drag - https://www.mathworks.com/help/aerotbx/ug/satellite.physicalproperties.html.

I hope this answers your question.