The drag exerted by an oblate rotating atmosphere on an artificial satellite

A theory is formulated for the motion of an artificial satellite under the joint effects of Earth oblateness and atmospheric drag. The Hamilton’s equations of motion are derived including the zonal harmonics of the geopotential up to J4 and the drag accelerations. The atmospheric model is an oblate rotating model in which the atmospheric rotation lags behind that of the Earth as the increasing distance from the Earth. The drag free problem is first solved via two canonical transformations to eliminate in succession the short and long period terms. An operator D is then defined and used to formulate the drag acceleration in terms of the double primed variables expressing the solution of the drag-free problem.