Selected papers from the Fourth Meeting on Celestial Mechanics, CELMEC IV San Martino al Cimino (Italy), 11-16 September 2005

The book provides the most recent advances of Celestial Mechanics, as provided by high-level scientists working in this field. It covers theoretical investigations as well as applications to concrete problems. Outstanding review papers are included in the book and they introduce the reader to leading subjects, like the variational approaches to find periodic orbits and the space debris polluting the circumterrestrial space.

The book provides the most recent advances of Celestial Mechanics, as provided by high-level scientists working in this field. It covers theoretical investigations as well as applications to concrete problems. Outstanding review papers are included in the book and they introduce the reader to leading subjects, like the variational approaches to find periodic orbits and the space debris polluting the circumterrestrial space.

This book describes a revolutionary new approach to determining low energy routes for spacecraft and comets by exploiting regions in space where motion is very sensitive (or chaotic). It also represents an ideal introductory text to celestial mechanics, dynamical systems, and dynamical astronomy. Bringing together wide-ranging research by others with his own original work, much of it new or previously unpublished, Edward Belbruno argues that regions supporting chaotic motions, termed weak stability boundaries, can be estimated. Although controversial until quite recently, this method was in fact first applied in 1991, when Belbruno used a new route developed from this theory to get a stray Japanese satellite back on course to the moon. This application provided a major verification of his theory, representing the first application of chaos to space travel. Since that time, the theory has been used in other space missions, and NASA is implementing new applications under Belbruno's direction. The use of invariant manifolds to find low energy orbits is another method here addressed. Recent work on estimating weak stability boundaries and related regions has also given mathematical insight into chaotic motion in the three-body problem. Belbruno further considers different capture and escape mechanisms, and resonance transitions. Providing a rigorous theoretical framework that incorporates both recent developments such as Aubrey-Mather theory and established fundamentals like Kolmogorov-Arnold-Moser theory, this book represents an indispensable resource for graduate students and researchers in the disciplines concerned as well as practitioners in fields such as aerospace engineering.

Written by an internationally renowned expert author and researcher, this monograph fills the need for a book conveying the sophisticated tools needed to calculate exo-planet motion and interplanetary space flight. It is unique in considering the critical problems of dynamics and stability, making use of the software Mathematica, including supplements for practical use of the formulae. A must-have for astronomers and applied mathematicians alike.

This book provides a brief introduction to some basic but important problems in celestial mechanics, and particularly in the few-body problem, such as the permissible and forbidden region of motion, the evolution of moment of inertia of a system, and the orbital stability of asteroids in the solar system. All these are based on some main results in the authors' research works, which are related to the qualitative method of celestial mechanics and nonlinear dynamics. Some of these works are interdisciplinary, involving celestial mechanics, nonlinear dynamics and other disciplines. The book covers a variety of topics for dynamics in the solar system, including the comets, asteroids, planetary rings, Trojan asteroids, etc.As a senior scientist, Professor Sun shares his research experiences in this book. Readers may find plenty of information both about the theoretical and numerical analyses in celestial mechanics, and about the applications of theories and methods to dynamical problems in astronomy.