In this paper, the global mapping of an irregular asteroid is studied referring to the ground track properties of a frozen orbit (at constant eccentricity and argument of pericentre on average). In fact, when the size of the asteroid is in the order of hundreds of kilometres or more, an appropriate design of the ground track becomes an important element to optimise the coverage and guarantee regular cycles of observation.
In this work, equilibrium attitude configurations, attitude stability and periodic attitude families are investigated for rigid spacecrafts moving on stationary orbits around asteroid 216 Kleopatra. The polyhedral approach is adopted to formulate the equations of rotational motion. In this dynamical model, six equilibrium attitude configurations with non-zero Euler angles are identified for a spacecraft moving on each stationary orbit. Then the linearized equations of attitude motion at equilibrium attitudes are derived.
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