Sensitivity analysis of regularised orbit formulations with interval arithmetic

Abstract

Regularized formulations provide a highly accurate description of the orbit as a geometric element, while the dynamical instabilities concentrate in the integration of the physical time. However, in highly perturbed problems, the geometric variables may also exhibit an important accumulation of propagation errors, where different formulations display distinctive error build-up patterns. To understand the error growth in each of the variables, in this paper interval arithmetic is used to perform a sensitivity analysis of the propagation error for various orbital formulations. The study considers a variety of orbital scenarios and conclusions are drawn based on the performed numerical tests.