Orbital motion under continuous normal thrust

A study was conducted to investigate the problem of continuous normal thrust acceleration being applied to vehicles in a Keplerian circular orbit and an elliptical orbit. Floquet theory was employed to determine the orbital motion characteristics in the elliptical case. The results indicated that the orbital motion of spacecraft under continuous constant normal thrust acceleration departing from a circular orbit presented a displaced orbit, while the orbital motion exhibits a quasi-periodic orbit in the elliptical case with upper and lower circular boundaries whose radii could be determined using the integral constants. It was determined that the new orbit was on the same spherical surface as the initial circular orbit and was tangent to the initial orbit at the initial position. The resultant angular velocity was the superposition of the initial orbital angular velocity and the radial angular velocity.