Modelling in Aerospace Engineering BSc Aerospace Eng.

Homework I: Lagrange libration points

In celestial mechanics, the Lagrangian libration points are the points near two large bodies in orbit where a
smaller object will maintain its position relative to the large orbiting bodies. At other locations, a small object
would go into its own orbit around one of the large bodies, but at the Lagrangian points the small object
maintains a stable or nearly stable position relative to the large bodies. You will learn more about this topic in
Space Vehicles and Orbital Dynamics in the fourth year.
There are five such points, L1 to L5, all in the orbital plane of the two large bodies. L1, L2, and L3 are
on the line through the centers of the two large bodies, so that they are called collinear points. L4 and L5
each form an equilateral triangle with the centers of the large bodies. In this exercise we want to compute the
position of L1, L2 and L3 for the Earth-Moon system and for the Sun-Jupiter system.
The Earth-Moon system is defined by the mass ratio µ = m2 /(m1 + m2 ) = 0.01214 where m2 is the mass
of the Moon and m1 is the mass of the Earth. Similarly, the Sun-Jupiter system is defined by the mass ratio
µ = 0.00095369. The collinear points are the roots of the following equation
1−µ µ
f (x) = − (µ + x) + (1 − µ − x) + x = 0, (1)
|µ + x|3 |1 − µ − x|3

where x is measured from the center of mas of the corresponding system.

Write a Matlab script to solve this problem using the secant method and find the three collinear points for
the Earth-Moon system and for the Sun-Jupiter system. You are free to select a stopping criterion and show
how the solution and iteration counts change as the tolerance is decreased. Explain this in your report.
Deliverables: you should provide a report no longer than 3 pages (in pdf form), and your script and
functions (in a zip file). The script must be ready to run without any inputs from the user and reproduce
exactly the results in your report.

Bioeng. and Aerospace Eng. Dept. 1 v 1.00