Simple satellite orbit propagator

Statistics – Computation

Scientific paper

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Orbital Elements, Variation Of Parameters

Scientific paper

An increasing number of space missions require on-board autonomous orbit determination. The purpose of this paper is to develop a simple orbit propagator (SOP) for such missions. Since most satellites are limited by the available processing power, it is important to develop an orbit propagator that will use limited computational and memory resources. In this work, we show how to choose state variables for propagation using the simplest numerical integration scheme available-the explicit Euler integrator. The new state variables are derived by the following rationale: Apply a variation-of-parameters not on the gravity-affected orbit, but rather on the gravity-free orbit, and teart the gravity as a generalized force. This ultimately leads to a state vector comprising the inertial velocity and a modified position vector, wherein the product of velocity and time is subtracted from the inertial position. It is shown that the explicit Euler integrator, applied on the new state variables, becomes a symplectic integrator, preserving the Hamiltonian and the angular momentum (or a component thereof in the case of oblateness perturbations). The main application of the proposed propagator is estimation of mean orbital elements. It is shown that the SOP is capable of estimating the mean elements with an accuracy that is comparable to a high-order integrator that consumes an order-of-magnitude more computational time than the SOP.

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