Abstract: Abstract：Comparing to traditional satellites, space solar power stations have large size. The influences of higher order gravitational force and torque to the orbital and attitude motion should be considered carefully. The influences of higher order gravitational force and torque to the orbital and attitude motion of a sun Tower space solar power station working in the earth’s gravitational field which the oblateness of earth is considered will be studied in this paper. Firstly, the gravitational potential function will be expanded in a Taylor series up to fourth order; Secondly, the gravitational force and torque of a solar power station will be derived and the equations of the attitude and orbital motion of solar power station are given. At last, the influence of the higher order gravitational force and torque to the orbital and attitude motion will be analyzed by numerical simulation. The result shows that the influence of the higher order gravitational force to the orbital motion can reach the order of 100m and the influence of the higher order gravitation torque to the attitude motion is small enough to be neglected.

Key words: higher order gravitational force and torque, Taylor expansion, earth oblateness, space solar power station