Cowell's Method for Earth Satellites

MATLAB script for solving the orbital initial value problem (IVP) for satellites in Earth orbit.

PDF document and an interactive MATLAB script named cowell.m that predicts the long-term behavior of an Earth satellite subject to perturbations. This script implements a special perturbation solution of orbital motion using a variable step size Runge-Kutta-Fehlberg (RKF78) integration method to numerically solve Cowell’s form of the system of differential equation subject to the central body gravity and other external forces. This is also called the orbital initial value problem (IVP).