Impact of orbital orientations and radii on TianQin constellation stability

Abstract

TianQin is a proposed space-based gravitational-wave observatory mission to be deployed in high circular Earth orbits. The equilateral-triangle constellation, with a nearly fixed orientation, can be distorted primarily under the lunisolar perturbations. To accommodate science payload requirements, one must optimize the orbits to stabilize the configuration in terms of arm-length, relative velocity, and breathing angle variations. In this paper, we present an efficient optimization method and investigate how changing the two main design factors, i.e. the orbital orientation and radius, impacts the constellation stability through single-variable studies. Thereby, one can arrive at the ranges of the orbital parameters that are comparatively more stable, which may assist future refined orbit design.