Special Issue On Modern Celestial Mechanics From Theory To Applications

At the opening of the "Third Meeting on Celestial Mechanics - CELMEC III", strong sensations hit our minds. The conference (18-22 June 2001) was being held in Villa Mondragone, a beautiful complex of buildings and gardens located within the township of Monte Porzio Catone, on the hills surrounding Rome. A former papal residence, the building has been recently restored by the University of Rome "Tor Vergata" to host academic activities and events. The conference room is called "Salone degli Svizzeri": here, Gregory XIII, on February 24, 1582, gave its sanction to the reform of the Julian calendar and declared officially in use the calendar still adopted nowadays. The magnificent high walls and tall ceiling strongly resounded, giving to our voice a peculiar Vatican sound, which took us by surprise. May be - we thought - a distant echo of the very words of Gregory XIII proclaiming the modem calendar was still haunting the room. Around us, in the audience, many countries were represented, thus indicating that the idea of putting together the three "souls" of modem Celestial Mechanics - perturbation theories, solar and stellar system studies, spaceflight dynamic- had been successful. CELMEC III is in fact the latest of a series of meetings (the first two editions took place in 1993 and 1997 in L' Aquila, Italy) whose aim is to establish a common ground among people working in Celestial Mechanics, yet belonging to different institutions such as universities, astronomical observatories, research institutes, space agencies and industries.

At the opening of the "Third Meeting on Celestial Mechanics - CELMEC III", strong sensations hit our minds. The conference (18-22 June 2001) was being held in Villa Mondragone, a beautiful complex of buildings and gardens located within the township of Monte Porzio Catone, on the hills surrounding Rome. A former papal residence, the building has been recently restored by the University of Rome "Tor Vergata" to host academic activities and events. The conference room is called "Salone degli Svizzeri": here, Gregory XIII, on February 24, 1582, gave its sanction to the reform of the Julian calendar and declared officially in use the calendar still adopted nowadays. The magnificent high walls and tall ceiling strongly resounded, giving to our voice a peculiar Vatican sound, which took us by surprise. May be - we thought - a distant echo of the very words of Gregory XIII proclaiming the modem calendar was still haunting the room. Around us, in the audience, many countries were represented, thus indicating that the idea of putting together the three "souls" of modem Celestial Mechanics - perturbation theories, solar and stellar system studies, spaceflight dynamic- had been successful. CELMEC III is in fact the latest of a series of meetings (the first two editions took place in 1993 and 1997 in L' Aquila, Italy) whose aim is to establish a common ground among people working in Celestial Mechanics, yet belonging to different institutions such as universities, astronomical observatories, research institutes, space agencies and industries.

This volume contains the detailed text of the major lectures delivered during the I-CELMECH Training School 2020 held in Milan (Italy). The school aimed to present a contemporary review of recent results in the field of celestial mechanics, with special emphasis on theoretical aspects. The stability of the Solar System, the rotations of celestial bodies and orbit determination, as well as the novel scientific needs raised by the discovery of exoplanetary systems, the management of the space debris problem and the modern space mission design are some of the fundamental problems in the modern developments of celestial mechanics. This book covers different topics, such as Hamiltonian normal forms, the three-body problem, the Euler (or two-centre) problem, conservative and dissipative standard maps and spin-orbit problems, rotational dynamics of extended bodies, Arnold diffusion, orbit determination, space debris, Fast Lyapunov Indicators (FLI), transit orbits and answer to a crucial question, how did Kepler discover his celebrated laws? Thus, the book is a valuable resource for graduate students and researchers in the field of celestial mechanics and aerospace engineering.

This volume contains the detailed text of the major lectures and the abstracts of the lectures delivered during the seminar sessions. The subject of our NATO Advanced Study Institute in 1981 was the Application of Modern Dynamics to Celestial Mechanics and Astrodynamics. This Preface will first explain the terminology, then it will review shortly the content of the lectures and will outline how all this was made possible and, finally, it will disclose our future aspirations. Periodicity is an extremely important concept in our field, therefore, it should not be unexpected that our NATO Advanced Study Institute is enjoying a period of three years. Since 1972 we conducted four Institutes with increasing interest and en thusiasm displayed by the participants, lecturers and by this Director. Celestial Mechanics or Dynamical Astronomy is part of Astronomy dealing mostly with the motion of natural celestial bodies. Astrodynamics or Orbital Mechanics is the application of dynamics to problems of Space Engineering and it treats mostly the dynamical behavior of artificial satellites and space probes. The underlying mathematical and dynamical principles are, of course, the same for Celestial Mechanics and for Astrodynamics. This Director of the Institute and Editor of the Proceedings was extremely fortunate to have obtained the cooperation of out standing lecturers who were clear, thorough, understandable, patient to answer questions, but above all, had knowledge of the ix V. Szebehely (ed.). Applications of Modern Dynamics to Celestial Mechanics and Astrodynamics. ix-x.

In the last 20 years, researchers in the field of celestial mechanics have achieved spectacular results in their effort to understand the structure and evolution of our solar system. Modern Celestial Mechanics uses a solid theoretical basis to describe recent results on solar system dynamics, and it emphasizes the dynamics of planets and of small bodies. To grasp celestial mechanics, one must comprehend the fundamental concepts of Hamiltonian systems theory, so this volume begins with an explanation of those concepts. Celestial mechanics itself is then considered, including the secular motion of planets and small bodies and mean motion resonances. Graduate students and researchers of astronomy and astrophysics will find Modern Celestial Mechanics an essential addition to their bookshelves.

This special issue of Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy features 13 selected papers . . .

C. Agostinelli: Sul problema delle aurore boreali e il moto di un corpuscolo elettrizzato in presenza di un dipolo magnetico.- G. Colombo: Introduction to the theory of earth’s motion about its center of mass.- E.M. Gaposchkin: The motion of the pole and the earth’s elasticity as studied from the gravity field of the earth by means of artificial earth satellites.- I.I. Shapiro: Radar astronomy, general relativity, and celestial mechanics.- V. Szebehely: Applications of the restricted problem of three bodies in space research.- G.A. Wilkins: The analysis of the observation of the satellites of Mars.

This volume contains the detailed text of the major lectures delivered during the I-CELMECH Training School 2020 held in Milan (Italy). The school aimed to present a contemporary review of recent results in the field of celestial mechanics, with special emphasis on theoretical aspects. The stability of the Solar System, the rotations of celestial bodies and orbit determination, as well as the novel scientific needs raised by the discovery of exoplanetary systems, the management of the space debris problem and the modern space mission design are some of the fundamental problems in the modern developments of celestial mechanics. This book covers different topics, such as Hamiltonian normal forms, the three-body problem, the Euler (or two-centre) problem, conservative and dissipative standard maps and spin-orbit problems, rotational dynamics of extended bodies, Arnold diffusion, orbit determination, space debris, Fast Lyapunov Indicators (FLI), transit orbits and answer to a crucial question, how did Kepler discover his celebrated laws? Thus, the book is a valuable resource for graduate students and researchers in the field of celestial mechanics and aerospace engineering.