EQUILIBRIUM-CONFIGURATIONS IN A TETHERED ATMOSPHERIC MISSION

When a tethered system is deployed downward, at low orbital altitudes, its equilibrium configurations are affected by the aerodynamic force. The purpose of this paper is to study the shape of the tether, in the assumption that both the departure from local vertical and the tether curvature can be large. Equations of motion first derived by Beletski i and Levin are used and the resulting non linear boundary value probl em is solved by numerical integration. Results are presented to show t he dependence of the tether configuration on system parameters, with p articular attention to the cases in which the satellite altitude is cl ose to 100 km.