Long-term evolution of the orbits of natural satellites

This review presents the recent works devoted to the construction or the improvement of the theories of motion of all natural planetary, satellites (except the Moon). The knowledge of the long-term evolution of these motions is strongly dependent on the accuracy of current theories. With the increasing precision of the ground-based observations, and with the past and future space missions, most of the theories have been or have to be revisited, taking into account more and more disturbing effects and specially tidal dissipation. These studies are often made difficult by the resonant behaviour of the system. We emphasize here tidal evolution in resonance. In the Jovian and Saturnian systems, tidal actions might explain the observed resonant state, as well as the heating of the satellites up to the softening and the resurfacing of some of them. However in the case of the Uranian satellites., no true resonance appears in spite of an observational evidence of tidal effects in resurfacing Ariel and Miranda, and new works try to expalin these differences.