Swing-By Maneuvers for a Cloud of Particles with Planets of the Solar System

Abstract:- The idea of the present paper is to study the swing-by maneuver between one of the planets of the Solar System and a cloud of particles. This is what happens when a fragmented comet crosses the orbit of a planet like Jupiter, Saturn, etc. We used the dynamical system that is formed by two main bodies (the Sun and one of the planets of the Solar System) and we assumed that they are in circular orbits around their center of mass and a cloud of particles is moving under the gravitational attraction of these two primaries. The motion is assumed to be planar for all the particles and the dynamics given by the “patched-conic ” approximation is used, which means that a series of two-body problems are used to generate analytical equations that describe the problem. The main obejctive is to understand the change of the orbit of this cloud of particles after the close approach with the planet. It is assumed that all the particles that belong to the cloud have semi-major axis a ± da and eccentricity e ± de before the close approach with the planet. It is desired to known those values after the close approach. In particular, we will study the effects of the periapsis distance in this maneuver