Stability of spinning satellite under axial thrust and internal mass motion

This paper considers a spinning rigid body and a particle with internal motion under axial thrust. This model is helpful for gaining insights into the nutation anomalies that occurred near the end of orbit injections performed by STAR-48 rocket motors. The stability of this system is investigated by means of linearized equations about a uniform spin reference state. In this model, a double root does not necessarily imply instability. The resulting stability condition defines a manifold in the parameter space. A detailed study of this manifold and the parameter space shows that the envelope of the constant solutions is in fact the stability boundary. Only part of the manifold defines a physical system and the range of frequency values that make the system unstable is restricted. Also it turns out that an increase of the spring stiffness, which restrains the internal motion, does not necessarily increase the stability margin. The application of the model is demonstrated using the orbit injection data of ESA's Ulysses satellite in 1990. (C) 2012 IAA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.