Technical Note: Perturbations on a Stationary Satellite by the Longitude-Dependent Terms in Mars’ Gravitational Field

In analogy with geostationary satellites, an areostationary satellite (a stationary satellite of Mars) will tend to drift in longitude, and in fact, it will tend to oscillate like a pendulum around two stable longitudinal points. In this article we provide a first-order analysis of such motion and provide estimates of the locations of the equilibrium points, the period of libration (130 days for small amplitudes), and the amount of corrective station keeping Δv needed to counteract such drift.