Orbit determination for remote-sensing satellites using only optical imagery

ABSTRACT

The development of high-resolution remote-sensing satellites is paving a promising path towards autonomous orbit determination using optical imagery. In this article, an image-based orbit determination strategy is investigated with a focus on the effects of lighting constraints, image resolution, and pointing accuracy on orbit determination performance. The measurement model is established based on the perspective projection and its observability is demonstrated. To investigate the influence of lighting constraints, four cases of simulations (considering no lighting constraints, either cloud-coverage constraint or night-time constraint, or both constraints) are conducted for the WorldView-3 satellite. The obtained root- mean square (RMS) errors of position and velocity in the four cases remain below 10.83 m and 1.42 cm ${\mathrm{s}}^{-1}$, respectively, at an image resolution of 0.3 m and a pointing accuracy of 0.0005${\hspace{0.17em}}^{\circ }$. By varying the values of image resolution and pointing accuracy, the effects of these two factors and their relative importance are further investigated. The final results indicate that pointing accuracy plays a dominant role in image-based orbit determination for high-resolution remote-sensing satellites.

Acknowledgements

This work was carried out with financial support from the National Basic Research Program 973 of China (No. 2013CB834103 and 2015CB857100), the Satellite Communication and Navigation Collaborative Innovation Centre (No. SatCN-201409), the National Natural Science Foundation (No. 11603011), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu province (No. BK20160612) and the Base of National Defence Scientific Research Fund (No. 2016110C019).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was carried out with financial support from the National Basic Research Program 973 of China [No. 2013CB834103 and 2015CB857100], the Satellite Communication and Navigation Collaborative Innovation Centre [No. SatCN-201409], the National Natural Science Foundation [No. 11603011], the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu province [No. BK20160612] and the Base of National Defence Scientific Research Fund [No. 2016110C019].