Stability of binary on highly eccentric orbit

TL;DR

This paper investigates how high orbital eccentricity affects the stability and capture likelihood of satellites, revealing that eccentricity limits satellite size and influences planetary migration, with implications for exoplanetary systems and mission design.

Contribution

It provides analytical and numerical analysis of satellite stability around eccentric orbits, highlighting differences between infinitesimal and true binary systems, and deriving energy dependence on eccentricity.

Findings

Satellites around eccentric orbits are less stable and smaller.

Eccentricity restricts giant planet migration in the Solar System.

Extrasolar planets may host significantly smaller satellites.

Abstract

It is known, that possibility to capture on a satellite orbit is decreased with primary orbital eccentricity increasing. It means, that satellites of planet on eccentric orbit are less stable. We study problem by analytical and numeric methods. A difference between case of infinitesimal mass satellite and true binary system is shown. The dependence of orbital energy on external eccentricity is derived for binary system. In result of our studying, we can conclude, that extrasolar planets may have significantly smaller satellites, than planets in our solar system. Moreover, dependence on eccentricity makes restriction on giant planets migration in our Solar System. The application to a flight dynamics and mission design is discussed.