SKYLAB

Propagate the July 4, 1979 Skylab TLE to its July 11, 1979 re-entry and crash on Earth.

This project explains how to mathematically model the de-orbit of a large, low Earth orbit satellite. It is organized into 4 parts, to facilitate creating an undergraduate stem lab from the material included:
• Part 1. Satellite Coordinate Systems
• Part 2. Runge-Kutta Propagation of State Vector
• Part 3. Atmosphere, Space Weather, Drag Force
• Part 4. Propagation of State Vectors with a Perturbing Drag Force: Case Study Skylab

The project was presented at the 2020 Fall AGU Meeting as a poster in the education session:

Noah, Meg and Paul Noah (2020), A MATLAB-based Numerical Orbital Decay Model for Undergraduate STEM Education, Abstract [768577] presented at 2020 Fall Meeting, AGU, 1-17 Dec.

Lab activity available upon request.