Orbital estimation of spacecraft under unknown low-thrust acceleration (First report: estimation of mean orbital elements)

Abstract

Space Situational Awareness (SSA) has been recognized to be important for safe space activities. As low-thrust propulsion technology becomes increasingly popular, SSA for low-thrust spacecraft may become an area of increasing interest. In this paper, we propose an orbital estimation method to predict the long-term evolution of spacecraft trajectory under unknown low-thrust acceleration. In particular, by the use of the perturbation theory and a nonlinear Kalman filter, long-term variations of orbital elements and thrust accelerations can be estimated from observation data of mean orbital elements. Performance of our method are evaluated for both controlled and uncontrolled orbits.

Keywords

• orbital estimation
• low-thrust spacecraft
• perturbation theory
• extended kalman filter
• space situational awareness