On numerical integration of the equations of motion of artificial earth satellites for orbits with large eccentricities.

A numerical experiment on integration of the equations of satellite motion in the case of highly eccentric orbits is performed by applying Kustaanheimo-Stifel (KS) regularization. The integration errors are estimated by comparing the initial and final values in forwardand backward-difference integration; run times are also estimated for different choices of the index n in the formula ds = r to the n dt, which determines the independent variable s. It is shown that the best results are obtained for n = 1.