Abstract Autonomous orbit determination (OD) for a group of spacecraft using only inter-spacecraft measurements has considerable value in space systems engineering. This paper proposes a novel solution for cooperative autonomous OD for a system comprised of three spacecraft, by employing inertial angles-only measurements. Based on the two-body dynamics of each spacecraft, the observability problem for the two-spacecraft and three-spacecraft systems is analyzed with the Lie-derivative criterion. It is deduced that the two-spacecraft system is third-order locally weakly unobservable, while the three-spacecraft system with three sets of inter-spacecraft observations is third-order locally weakly observable under certain sufficient conditions. To complement the theoretical analysis, we use a numerical method to compute the observability measure to illustrate the degree of observability. Several scenarios are designed to demonstrate the influence of orbital configurations, of J 2 dynamics, and measurement noise on the degree of observability. In addition, the observability of the three-spacecraft system is also compared with the two-spacecraft system. Finally, practical cases of three-spacecraft autonomous OD are simulated which demonstrate the application and feasibility of the proposed method.

    Highlights Autonomous orbit determination with inertial angles-only measurements is proposed. Observability of three-spacecraft autonomous orbit determination system is analyzed. Observability of different observation systems are compared. Modified observability Gramian is defined for multi-spacecraft system. A series of simulations are presented to demonstrate the feasibility of the method.


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    Titel :

    Three-spacecraft autonomous orbit determination and observability analysis with inertial angles-only measurements


    Beteiligte:
    Hu, Yunpeng (Autor:in) / Sharf, Inna (Autor:in) / Chen, Lei (Autor:in)

    Erschienen in:

    Acta Astronautica ; 170 ; 106-121


    Erscheinungsdatum :

    2020-01-02


    Format / Umfang :

    16 pages




    Medientyp :

    Aufsatz (Zeitschrift)


    Format :

    Elektronische Ressource


    Sprache :

    Englisch




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