Tracking Upper Stages with GPS

Jurn S. Leung, Paul Kim, Jonathan Tekawy, and G.T. Tseng

Abstract:	Upper stages are presently tracked by ground radars with C-band and SGLS’ ranging transponders. There is an interest in replacing/augmenting the radar net- works with a standardized GPS-based tracking system to reduce operational and maintenance costs. Tracking the upper stage of launch vehicles with GPS presents unique challenges. During the long ascent mission, the visibility and measurement geometry of the GPS constellation change drastically. An adaptive estimation strategy is required to accommodate the changing relative strength of measurements. As a demonstration of the capability of GPS-based up- per stage tracking and trajectory reconstruction, this paper presents the result of covariance error analy- ses of GPS-aided navigation for a typical TITAN/IUS mission. Simulation result shows that an integrated GPS/INS will reduce IUS payload injection error by two orders of magnitude. Further improvement is pos- sible with the exploitation of GPS cross-link ranging signals.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 52nd Annual Meeting of The Institute of Navigation (1996) June 19 - 21, 1996 Royal Sonesta Hotel Cambridge, MA
Pages:	821 - 826
Cite this article:	Leung, Jurn S., Kim, Paul, Tekawy, Jonathan, Tseng, G.T., "Tracking Upper Stages with GPS," Proceedings of the 52nd Annual Meeting of The Institute of Navigation (1996), Cambridge, MA, June 1996, pp. 821-826.
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