NASA’s Orbital Flight Handbook, published in 1963, is a treasure trove of technical information, including a section comparing the strengths and weaknesses of several numerical methods for solving differential equations.
The winner was a predictor-corrector scheme known as Gauss-Jackson, a method I have not heard of outside of orbital mechanics, but one apparently particularly well suited to NASA’s needs.
The Gauss-Jackson second-sum method is strongly recommended for use in either Encke or Cowell [approaches to orbit modeling].
For comparable accuracy, it will allow step-sizes larger by factors of four or more than any of the forth order methods.
… As compared with unsummed methods of comparable accuracy, the Gauss-Jackson method has the very important advantage that roundoff error growth is inhibited.
… The Gauss-Jackson method is particularly suitable on orbits where infrequent changes in the step-size are necessary.
Here is a table summarizing the characteristics of each of the solvers.
Notice that Gauss-Jackson is the only method whose roundoff error accumulation is described as “excellent.
” A paper from 2004 [1] implies that the Gauss-Jackson method was still in use at NASA at the time of writing.
The Gauss-Jackson multi-step predictor-corrector method is widely used in numerical integration problems for astrodynamics and dynamical astronomy.
The U.
S.
space surveillance centers have used an eighth-order Gauss-Jackson algorithm since the 1960s.
I could imagine a young hotshot explaining to NASA why they should use some other ODE solver, only to be told that the agency had already evaluated the alternatives half a century ago, and that the competitors didn’t have the same long-term accuracy.
More math and space posts Golay codes (used on Voyager) Reed-Solomon codes (also used on Voyager) Hohmann transfer orbit [1] Matthew M.
Berry and Liam M.
Healy.
Implementation of the Gauss-Jackson Integration for Orbit Propagation.
The Journal of the Astronautical Sciences, Vol 52, No 3, July-September 2004, pp.
311–357.
.