PHASE CURVES OF THE EQUATION OF MOTION OF A POINT MASS.

Investigation of the equations of inertial navigation is reduced to investigation of the motion of two point masses M and M' that move in the force field of an attraction center under the action of the same external nongravitational force. Point mass M is the sensitive mass of a three-dimensional accelerometer mounted on the object, while M is a model point mass whose trajectory is generated by the computer of the inertial system. In this paper, the problem is solved for two particular cases: when the points in question move in one fixed plane, and when one of them moves at constant velocity along an arc of the great circle of a sphere of known radius. Moreover, one property of the manifold of motions of the point masses is formulated for the general three-dimensional case.