Abstract
Chaotic librational motion of tethered satellite systems in elliptic orbits has been attracting researchers recently, and some papers have been published. However, those papers have only conducted numerical simulations. The main objective of this paper is to study chaotic librational motion of a tethered satellite system in elliptic orbits on the ground experimentally, and to verify the existence of periodic librational motions of the tethered satellite system. In addition, an application of delayed feedback control using change of tether length to the chaotic pitch motion of a tethered satellite system in elliptic orbits is investigated experimentally.
