Stability of Equilibria for a Satellite Subject to Gravitational and Constant Torques

We study the stability of equilibria of a rigid body that moves along a circular orbit and is subject to gravity-gradient and constant torques. For each orientation of the satellite, there exists a constant torque that provides an equilibrium. For two important special cases, stability can be studied analytically. When one of the satellite's central principal axes is aligned with one of the axes of the orbital reference frame, the necessary conditions of stability are satisfied for appropriate values of inertial parameters. When one of the principal axes lies in a coordinate plane of the orbital frame, equilibria are proved to be unstable. In the general case, the stability is studied numerically.

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