An Automated Low-Earth Orbit Determination System With High Accuracy Real-Time Capability

Stephen Lichten, Ronald Mullerschoen, Jeffrey Srinivasan, Ulf Lindqwister, Timothy Munson, Sien-Chong Wu, Bruce Haines, Joseph Guinn, and Lawrence Young

Abstract:	GPS-based tracking is emerging as the tracking system of choice for low-Earth orbiters (LEOs). With flight GPS instrumentation, LEO tracking and orbit determination functions can be highly automated. Automation in the tracking and navigation process offers the potential to simplify current procedures and lower operational costs. Significant advantages in performance are also possible with GPS-based techniques. A wide range of configurations for GPS-based LEO tracking will be presented in this paper. Tracking and navigation accuracies range from hundreds of meters for the simplest approaches, to 10 cm for the most elaborate. The simplest consists of a minimal GPS flight instrument requiring only, a fraction of a watt power and a few hundred grams mass. Better performance can be achieved with a more conventional GPS flight receiver. For the best accuracy, data from ground GPS trackers can be combined with the flight data. Even when ground data are incorporated, the whole process can be highly automated and accomplished in near-real time. This paper includes results from a recent demo for a LEO where such automated data acquisition and processing were demonstrated and better than l-meter real-time knowledge of the orbit was achieved with both anti-spoofing and selective availability on. This work should be of interest to various government agencies (including NASA and the military) as well as to the private sector. The paper describes configurable automated orbit determination systems utilizing GPS to provide orbit knowledge in real time to between 1 and several hundred meters accuracy, depending on a number of design factors. The focus is on tracking techniques which would be viable for small spacecraft, which are expected to dominate NASA’s low-Earth missions in the coming decade.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 1995 National Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation January 18 - 20, 1995 Disneyland Hotel Anaheim, CA
Pages:	611 - 619
Cite this article:	Lichten, Stephen, Mullerschoen, Ronald, Srinivasan, Jeffrey, Lindqwister, Ulf, Munson, Timothy, Wu, Sien-Chong, Haines, Bruce, Guinn, Joseph, Young, Lawrence, "An Automated Low-Earth Orbit Determination System With High Accuracy Real-Time Capability," Proceedings of the 1995 National Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation, Anaheim, CA, January 1995, pp. 611-619.
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