Altitude estimation for a celestial navigation system based on infrared Earth measurement

The navigation stars captured by the star sensor are far away from the spacecraft; this creates a strong similarity among star images at similar locations, attitudes but different altitudes, and renders the celestial navigation system (CNS) unable to measure the spacecraft altitude. This paper propo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Acta astronautica 2019-06, Vol.159, p.105-111
Main Authors: Gou, Bin, Cheng, Yong-mei, de Ruiter, Anton H.J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Altitude
Celestial navigation
Celestial navigation system
Earth
Estimation accuracy
High altitude
Infrared detectors
Infrared Earth sensor
Infrared imagery
Missions
Navigation
Navigation systems
Spacecraft
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Summary:The navigation stars captured by the star sensor are far away from the spacecraft; this creates a strong similarity among star images at similar locations, attitudes but different altitudes, and renders the celestial navigation system (CNS) unable to measure the spacecraft altitude. This paper proposes a spacecraft altitude estimation method for the CNS based on infrared Earth measurement. An infrared Earth sensor first determines the Earth observation vector between the spacecraft and the Earth center relative to the inertial frame. The geographic distance between the Earth center and the Earth edge in the infrared Earth image is then calculated. Finally, the spacecraft altitude is estimated based on the triangle relationship between the spacecraft location, the Earth center, and the infrared Earth image's Earth edge relative to the inertial frame. Simulation results illustrate that the proposed method is extremely effective in high-accuracy altitude estimation. Compared to high-altitude missions with different altitudes, the altitude estimation accuracy is limited into 0.4% of the true altitude.
ISSN:0094-5765
1879-2030
DOI:10.1016/j.actaastro.2019.03.054