Explicit Symplectic Integrator for Highly Eccentric Orbits

An explicit symplectic integrator is constructed for perturbed elliptic orbits of an arbitrary eccentricity. The perturbation should be Hamiltonian, but it may depend on time explicitly. The main feature of the integrator is the use of KS variables in the ten-dimensional extended phase space. As an example of its application the motion of an Earth satellite under the action of the planet's oblateness and of lunar perturbations is studied. The results confirm the superiority of the method over a classical Wisdom–Holman algorithm in both accuracy and computation time. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.