Practical Astrodynamics

The topics covered in this course are chosen to expose you to the practical side of Astrodynamics. These topics are based on elementary algorithms, straightforward to implement numerically, make use of publicly available data, and are addressed by the students through weekly practical assignments. Any implementation is to be done from scratch, i.e., without resorting to existing black-box proprietary libraries or toolboxes.

Each academic year (refer to Brightspace), a selection of topics will be made from:

1. Open satellite orbit data: Two-Line Elements (TLEs) and JPL Ephemerides

2. Applications and transformation of reference frames and element types

3. Numerical integration of trajectories

4. Orbit perturbations

5. Basics of numerical optimisation

6. Orbit Control