Determining the dynamics of spacecraft rotational motion with the use of information provided by global navigation satellite systems

Abstract

The paper shows the possibility of using navigation user equipment in the task of determining the dynamics of spacecraft rotational motion. An approach is proposed that makes it possible to estimate the parameters of the rotational motion of a spacecraft by analyzing the geometric visibility of navigational spacecraft of global navigation satellite systems. The proposed approach consists in approximation of the accumulated information on the position of the spacecraft longitudinal axis using the angular motion model and the measurement model. The approximation is made on the basis of minimizing the sum of squared deviations between the calculated coordinates of the vector of the longitudinal axis and their simulated values. The minimization procedure is based on the algorithm of differential evolution. The proposed approach allows us to estimate the angular velocity of the nanosatellite with an accuracy of at least 0.3 deg/s and orientation angles with an accuracy of at least 15 degrees.

Keywords

• Spacecraft
• rotational motion
• navigation