D.J. Scheeres1
CMES-Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences, Vol.111, No.3, pp. 203-227, 2016, DOI:10.3970/cmes.2016.111.203
Abstract The minimum energy and stable configurations in the spherical, equal mass full 4-body problem are investigated. This problem is defined as the dynamics of finite density spheres which interact gravitationally and through surface contact forces. This is a variation of the gravitational n-body problem in which the bodies are not allowed to come arbitrarily close to each other (due to their finite density), enabling the existence of resting configurations in addition to orbital motion. Previous work on this problem has outlined an efficient and simple way in which the stability of configurations in this problem More >