Tethered aerobraking design for repeatable maneuvers

An aerobraking maneuver performed with a tethered system has the benefit of increasing the drag for a given center of mass orbit by dropping the lower subsatellite into the denser atmosphere. While this concept has received significant attention in the literature, the exact means of controlling the attitude prior to the aerobraking fly-through has not been adequately treated. In particular, a scheme for repeated passes in elliptical orbits has...