Chaotic gravitational zones around a regularly shaped complex rotating body

Abstract In preparation for the Rosetta mission, the location and widths of gravitational resonances surrounding a regularly shaped and possibly complex rotating body are mapped following the second fundamental model of resonance. It is found that for uniaxial rotation of the central body, the surrounding resonances are widest for prograde orbits. If the figure axis is tilted with respect to the spin axis of the central body, an additional number of wide resonances appear with a preference for prograde and inclined orbits, and the occurrence of initial conditions which lie in the globally connected chaotic web is significantly increased. For larger rotational excitations, it is seen how these new additional resonances overlap internally at low eccentricity for very large semi-major axes. However, with exceptions for some excited short-axis rotational modes of the central body, it is argued that most resonances vanish for retrograde orbits lying in the plane normal to the body spin, and that resonant or non-resonant stability therefore can be expected for a wide range of mean orbit eccentricities.