Part 3: Research + Resources

Once you've built a high-level picture of the topics in astrodynamics, the best way to get up to speed is to watch / attend lectures, review conference papers, dissertations, journal articles, and textbooks. In this section, we'll review some of the good jumping off points.

Conferences

Conferences are one of the best ways to learn about the new topics and areas of research in our community. The two most regularly attended astrodynamics conferences are:

1. Astrodynamics Specialist Conference
2. Space Flight Mechanics Conference

These conferences are organized by the American Astronautical Society (AAS) and the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) professional societies, and occur annually in August and January respectively. The specific topic areas solicited are:

Topic Areas at SFM Conference (2024)

Topic Area
Dynamical Systems Theory for Spaceflight	Orbit Determination and Estimation
Machine Learning and AI for Space Flight	Space Situational Awareness
Earth Orbital and Planetary Mission Studies	Cislunar Astrodynamics, Missions, and Operations
Trajectory Maneuver Design and Optimization**	Attitude Dynamics, Determination, and Control
Interplanetary Mission Design	Satellite Constellations, Formations, and Relative Motion
Asteroid and Small Body Missions	Space Rendezvous and Proximity Operations
Orbital Dynamics and Debris	In-Space Assembly, Manufacturing, and Space Robotics

Journal Papers

Another great way of getting up to speed is to review articles published in the following journals:

Journal Name	Focus Area	Publisher
Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics	Control systems, navigation, and dynamics	AIAA
Acta Astronautica	Space science, engineering, and technology	Elsevier
Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy	Theoretical and computational celestial mechanics	Springer
Advances in Space Research	Space studies covering natural sciences and engineering	Elsevier
Space Science Reviews	Review articles in all areas of space research	Springer
Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets	Spacecraft and payload engineering, launch dynamics	AIAA

In some communities there are "top tier" journals. Astrodynamics is niche enough that all of these are somewhat reputable. JGCD is potentially the most commonly cited, but not by a large margin.

It is recommended to start by reviewing survey papers. These will give you historical context into topics of interest and give a good foundation from which you can look for more specialized resources.

Dissertations

Dissertations are another outstanding resource for learning as well as identifying an interesting research problem. These are meant to be mini-textbooks on a very specific problem. They often will cover the background, mathematical foundations, interesting experiments, and many even end with future work. For graduates who don't pursue careers in academia, then these are often excellent starting points for fellowship applications as they are often sufficiently mature problems that are unlikely to be addressed by others in the near future.

While excellent astrodynamics dissertations can come from anywhere, a good recommendation is to consult recent dissertations from CU Boulder, Purdue, Georgia Tech, and Stanford as they have some of the highest volume of relevant dissertations. Recent graduates from Hanspeter Schaub, Kathleen Howell, Jay McMahon, Dan Scheeres, Simone D'Amico, Roberto Furfaro, Evangelos Theodorou, Panagiotis Tsiotras, Jim Longuski are all reasonably good bets.

Textbooks

There are surprisingly few seminal textbooks in astrodynamics. Most textbooks have one or two very good sections, and then others that are generally underdeveloped or hard to understand. Of the consistent recommendations

Textbook Title	Author(s)	Key Features
"Analytical Mechanics of Space Systems"	Hanspeter Schaub, John L. Junkins	Emphasis on attitude dynamics, mentions of formation flying + orbits
"Orbital Motion in Strongly Perturbed Environments"	Daniel Scheeres	Best textbook on orbits
"Statistical Orbit Determination"	Tapley, Schutz, and Born	Focus on satellite navigation and filtering

Additional Resources

There are not many good resources on astrodynamics online. The best I could find, after a relatively comprehensive search are:

• Orbital Mechanics Ebook
• Shane Ross: Attitude Dynamics( )
• Shane Ross: Orbital Dynamics for 3BP( ) -- Lectures 1 + 2 are unnecessarily complex, just power through
• Numerical Optimization Book
• Differential Dynamical Systems Revised Edition: James D. Meiss
• Battins Astrodynamics Notes

Astrodynamics Concepts to Learn

Below is a list of keywords for astrodynamics inspired by Patrick Kidger's "Just Know Things". They include a list of concepts you should know by the time you graduate, as well as a list of researchers to search if you want to learn more.

Important Concepts in Astrodynamics

Orbital Mechanics

• Keplerian Orbits
  • Circular
  • Parabolic
  • Hyperbolic
• Orbital Elements
  • Traditional
  • Equinoctal
  • Milonkovitch
  • Delaunay
• The Three-Body Problem
  • Circular Restricted 3BP
  • Jacobi Constant
  • Poincaré Maps
  • Pork-Chop Plots
• Perturbations
  • N-Body Effects
  • High-Order Gravity
    • Planetary Oblateness
    • Spherical Harmonics
    • Polyhedral
  • Lagrange Planetary Equations
  • Gauss' Equations
  • Variation of Parameters
• Boundary Value Problems
  • Shooting Methods
    • Single Shooting
    • Multiple Shooting
  • Collocation
• Integrators
  • Euler
  • Runge Kutta
  • Variable Time-Step
• Periodic Orbits
  • Lyaponov Stability
  • Monodromy Matrix
• Quasi-Periodic Orbits (QPO)
• Stable and Unstable Manifolds
• Patched Conics
• GMAT

Related Faculty - Kathleen Howell - Natasha Bosanac - Daniel Scheeres - John Junkins

Attitude Dynamics

• Reference Frames
• Direction Cosine Matrix
• Euler Angles
• Quaternions
• Classic Rodrigues Parameters
• Modified Rodrigues Parameters
• Transport Theorem
• Reaction Wheels
• Variable Speed Control Moment Gyroscopes (VSCMGs)

Related Faculty - Hanspeter Schaub - John Crassidis - John Junkins

Spacecraft Components / Sensors

• Coarse Sun Sensors (CSS)
• Inertial Measurement Units (IMU)
• Attitude Control System Thrusters (ACS Thrusters)
• Delta V Thrusters (DV Thrusters)

Control Theory

• Linear Control
• Optimal Control
• Lyopanov Theory
• Asymptotic Convergence

Related Faculty - Panagiotis Tsiotras - Evangelos Theodorou

Orbit Determination

• Bayes Rule
• Recursive Least Squares
• Observability
• Kalman Filters
• Extended Kalman Filters
• Unscented Kalman Filters
• Particle Filters
• Square Root Filters
• Gaussian Mixture Models
• Consider Covariance
• Optical Navigation (OpNav)
• Landmark Tracking
• Natural Feature Tracking
• Ground Stations
• Deep Space Network (DSN)
• Doppler Ranging

Related Faculty - Marcus Holzinger - John Christian

Formation Flying

• Chlossey Hill Wilshire (CHW) Frame
• Relative Orbital Elements
• J2 Invariant Orbits

Related Faculty - Simone D'Amico - Hanspeter Schaub