Abstract The motion of an artificial satellite is studied considering geopotential perturbations and resonances between the frequencies of the mean orbital motion and the Earth rotational motion. The behavior of the satellite motion is analyzed in the neighborhood of the resonances 15:1. A suitable sequence of canonical transformations reduces the system of differential equations describing the orbital motion to an integrable kernel. The phase space of the resulting system is studied taking into account that one resonant angle is fixed. Simulations are presented showing the variations of the semi-major axis of artificial satellites due to the resonance effects.