上行离子源区卫星探测的轨道需求分析

极区从电离层到磁层的上行粒子流探测研究是空间天气建模中的重要问题,其起源和加速机制是磁层-电离层-热层耦合小卫星星座计划的主要科学目标. 磁层-电离层-热层耦合小卫星星座计划拟定由两颗磁层星和两颗电离层/热层星组成星座对极区进行联合观测. 其中,上行粒子源区附近的就位探测是电离层-热层耦合机制研究的重点,也是电离层/热层星轨道设计的关键. 根据相关空间探测计划和卫星观测结果,通过比较圆轨道和椭圆轨道两种方案,确定电离层/热层星采用椭圆轨道.      

Collision probability and spacecraft disposition in the geostationary orbit

Since 1963 approximately 300 satellites have been launched into the geostationary orbit, followed possibly by another additional 200 satellites up to the year 2000. Ground surveillance with radar and optical sensors able to detect objects of 1 m minimum size in the geostationary ring indicates a total population of several hundred which includes active and defunct satellites and spent upper stages. In addition, a population of untrackable objects is conjectured, whose size can only be estimated, possibly several thousand of smaller objects.

The purpose of this paper is to review the long-term evolution of orbits in the geostationary ring and at higher altitude, the collision probabilities and disposition options.

The major perturbations are considered including attitude-orbit cross-coupling effects which could cause secular orbit perturbations.

Collision probabilities for current and projected populations are reviewed considering different approaches, such as a deterministic treatment of the uncontrolled population and a stochastic modeling for the controlled satellites. Also, colocation, that is sharing of the same longitude slot by several operational satellites, is a potential source for collision, if no preventive measures are taken.

As regards spacecraft disposition options, the conclusion is that reorbiting is currently the only practical measure to safeguard the geostationary orbit. In this recommended procedure the defunct satellites are inserted into a so-called graveyard orbit, located suffieciently high above the geostationary orbit.     

The GLONASS-M satellite yaw-attitude model

The proper modeling of the satellites’ yaw-attitude is a prerequisite for high-precision Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) positioning and poses a particular challenge during periods when the satellite orbital planes are partially eclipsed. Whereas a lot of effort has been put in to examine the yaw-attitude control of GPS satellites that are in eclipsing orbits, hardly anything is known about the yaw-attitude behavior of eclipsing GLONASS-M satellites. However, systematic variations of the carrier phase observation residuals in the vicinity of the orbit’s noon and midnight points of up to ±27 cm indicate significant attitude-related modeling issues. In order to explore the GLONASS-M attitude laws during eclipse seasons, we have studied the evolution of the horizontal satellite antenna offset estimates during orbit noon and orbit midnight using a technique that we refer to as “reverse kinematic precise point positioning”. In this approach, we keep all relevant global geodetic parameters fixed and estimate the satellite clock and antenna phase center positions epoch-by-epoch using 30-second observation and clock data from a global multi-GNSS ground station network. The estimated horizontal antenna phase center offsets implicitly provide the spacecraft’s yaw-attitude. The insights gained from studying the yaw angle behavior have led to the development of the very first yaw-attitude model for eclipsing GLONASS-M satellites. The derived yaw-attitude model proves to be much better than the nominal yaw-attitude model commonly being used by today’s GLONASS-capable GNSS software packages as it reduces the observation residuals of eclipsing satellites down to the normal level of non-eclipsing satellites and thereby prevents a multitude of measurements from being incorrectly identified as outliers. It facilitates continuous satellite clock estimation during eclipse and improves in particular the results of kinematic precise point positioning of ground-based receivers.     

Modeling and initial assessment of the inter-frequency clock bias for COMPASS GEO satellites

The COMPASS system is a project established by China to develop an independent global satellite navigation system, which has five GEO (Geostationary Orbit) satellites and thirty Non-GEO satellites. An apparent inter-frequency clock bias (IFCB) for COMPASS GEO satellites is investigated using the real data. The bias also is modeled by the different models. Based on the 15 months (DOY 121, 2011–214, 2012) single-day-estimated results, the periodic variation of IFCBs of the COMPASS GEO satellite is studied using a harmonic analysis. The notable periods of 12 h and 8 h are noted. The harmonics-based models with different periods and different orders and quadratic function based model are used to describe the IFCB. The performances show that the 4-order harmonics-based model with the periods of 24, 12, 8 and 6 h is most optimal than others for describing the IFCB of COMPASS GEO satellite. Its amplitudes and phases estimated from a least square fit are used to study the features of the IFCB. The results show that the current amplitudes and phases do not present special features. Although the irregular amplitudes and phases of the model are disadvantageous for the long-term prediction of IFCB, it is obvious that the modeling IFCB can simple its service and a few of coefficients can replace the IFCB series. The performance of the model in short-term prediction IFCB is tested using the ten-day data (DOY 215-224, 2012).     

Contact-free release dynamics of tens of stacked satellites with multiaxial rotations

Stacked satellites have a promising application in aerospace engineering for the merits of high launch efficiency and networking capability. As one of the key technical points, releasing tens or even hundreds of satellites from the stacked state in a simple and contact-free manner is of importance. In this paper, the contact-free release dynamics of tens of stacked satellites is studied with only the initial multiaxial rotations of the system. First of all, a rigid multibody dynamic model of the stacked satellite system is established via the natural coordinate formulation (NCF). The NCF modeling scheme is able to describe the large overall motions of the satellites without any singularity and makes it possible to simplify the varying constraints between the satellites. Then, the orbital dynamics of the stacked satellite system is derived via coordinate transformation by taking the Coriolis forces, centrifugal forces, and gravity gradient into consideration. In order to rapidly and accurately detect the possible contact between satellites, a convex optimization model for minimum distance computation is proposed by using a hyperelliptic approximation for a cubic satellite. Finally, a benchmark example is given to validate the contact detection algorithm and three release dynamic cases for the stacked satellites are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the contact-free releasing approach with multiaxial rotations.     

Specification of the Earth’s plasmasphere with data assimilation

In this paper we report on initial work toward data assimilative modeling of the Earth’s plasmasphere. As the medium of propagation for waves which are responsible for acceleration and decay of the radiation belts, an accurate assimilative model of the plasmasphere is crucial for optimizing the accurate prediction of the radiation environments encountered by satellites. On longer time-scales the plasmasphere exhibits significant dynamics. Although these dynamics are modeled well by existing models, they require detailed global knowledge of magnetospheric configuration which is not always readily available. For that reason data assimilation can be expected to be an effective tool in improving the modeling accuracy of the plasmasphere. In this paper we demonstrate that a relatively modest number of measurements, combined with a simple data assimilation scheme, inspired by the ensemble Kalman filtering data assimilation technique does a good job of reproducing the overall structure of the plasmasphere including plume development. This raises hopes that data assimilation will be an effective method for accurately representing the configuration of the plasmasphere for space weather applications.     

关于北斗卫星导航系统的被动式定位算法比较研究

我国北斗卫星导航系统空间卫星共有2或3颗,无法单独满足被动导航定位的要求．针对这种卫星稀少的情况提出了3种被动式定位算法: 2星定位算法、 3星3参数定位算法和3星4参数定位算法, 这些算法分别采用气压测高方法增加观测数据和采用数学模型描述接收机钟差的方法减少定位方程求解的未知数;探讨了北斗卫星导航系统备份星的可用性和对导航定位精度的贡献;还提出了准差分修正技术,提高了定位精度．实验证明, 3种算法都取得了100m以内的定位结果,可以满足一般用户定位需求．     

卫星控制系统时序建模分析方法研究

分析国内外卫星控制系统时序分析与设计方法和方法的现状,阐述了对时序进行数学建模的重要性.提出了针对时序设计过程的数学建模分析方法和时序描述的工作流图方法,通过系统性的时序建模,可求解出时序过程中的所有时间参数,以便用于时序分析和指导时序测试.     

The YORP effect on the GOES 8 and GOES 10 satellites: A case study

The Yarkovsky-O’Keefe-Radzievskii-Paddack (YORP) effect is a proposed explanation for the observed rotation behavior of inactive satellites in Earth orbit. This paper further explores the YORP effect for highly asymmetric inactive satellites. Satellite models are developed to represent the GOES 8 and GOES 10 satellites, both of which are currently inactive in geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO). A simple satellite model for the GOES 8 satellite is used to analyze the short period variations of the angular velocity and obliquity as a result of the YORP effect. A more complex model for the rotational dynamics of the GOES 8 and GOES 10 satellites are developed to probe their sensitivity and to match observed spin periods and states of these satellites. The simulated rotation periods are compared to observations for both satellites. The comparison between YORP theory and observed rotation rates for both satellites show that the YORP effect could be the cause for the observed rotational behavior. The YORP model also predicts a novel state for the GOES 8 satellite, namely that it could periodically fall into a tumbling rotation state. Recent observations of this satellite are consistent with this prediction.     

Design and performances of laser retro-reflector arrays for Beidou navigation satellites and SLR observations

Beidou is the regional satellite navigation system in China, consisting of three kinds of orbiting satellites, MEO, GEO and IGSO, with the orbital altitudes of 21500–36000 km. For improving the accuracy of satellites orbit determination, calibrating microwave measuring techniques and providing better navigation service, all Beidou satellites are equipped with laser retro-reflector arrays (LRAs) to implement high precision laser ranging. The paper presents the design of LRAs for Beidou navigation satellites and the method of inclined installation of LRAs for GEO satellites to increase the effective reflective areas for the regional ground stations. By using the SLR system, the observations for Beidou satellites demonstrated a precision of centimeters. The performances of these LRAs on Beidou satellites are very excellent.     

Estimating low resolution gravity fields at short time intervals to reduce temporal aliasing errors

The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission has been estimating temporal changes in the Earth’s gravitational field since its launch in 2002. While it is not yet fully resolved what the limiting source of error is for GRACE, studies on future missions have shown that temporal aliasing errors due to undersampling signals of interest (such as hydrological variations) and errors in atmospheric, ocean, and tide models will be a limiting source of error for missions taking advantage of improved technologies (flying drag-free with a laser interferometer). This paper explores the option of reducing the effects of temporal aliasing errors by directly estimating low degree and order gravity fields at short time intervals, ultimately resulting in data products with improved spatial resolution. Three potential architectures are considered: a single pair of polar orbiting satellites, two pairs of polar orbiting satellites, and a polar orbiting pair of satellites coupled with a lower inclined pair of satellites. Results show that improvements in spatial resolution are obtained when one estimates a low resolution gravity field every two days for the case of a single pair of satellites, and every day for the case of two polar pairs of satellites. However, the spatial resolution for these cases is still lower than that provided by simply destriping and smoothing the solutions via standard GRACE post-processing techniques. Alternately, estimating daily gravity fields for the case of a polar pair of satellites coupled with a lower inclined pair results in solutions with superior spatial resolution than that offered by simply destriping and smoothing the solutions.     

Early analysis of precise orbit and clock offset determination for the satellites of the global BeiDou-3 system

Eight new-generation BeiDou satellites (BeiDou-3) have been launched into Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), allowing for global coverage since March 2018, and they are equipped with new hydrogen atomic clocks and updated rubidium clocks. Firstly, we analyzed the signals for the carrier-to-noise-density ratio (C/N0) and pseudorange multipath (MP) by using international GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) Monitoring and Assessment System (iGMAS) station data, and found that B1C has a lower C/N0, and B2a has the same level of C/N0 as the B1I and B3I signals. For pseudorange multipath, compared with the BeiDou-2 satellites, the obvious systematic variation of MP scatters related to the elevation angle is greatly improved for the BeiDou-3 and BeiDou-3e satellites signals. For the signals of the BeiDou-3 satellites, the order of the Root Mean Square (RMS) values of multipath and noise is B3I?<?B1I?<?B2a?<?B1C. Then, the comparison of the precise orbit determination and clock offset determination for the BeiDou-2, BeiDou-3, and BeiDou-3 experimental (BeiDou-3e) satellites was done by using 10 stations from iGMAS. The 3D precision of the 24?h orbit overlap is 24.55, 25.61, and 23.35?cm for the BeiDou-3, BeiDou-3e, and BeiDou-2 satellites, respectively. BeiDou-3 satellite has a comparable precision to that of the BeiDou-2 satellite. For the precision of clock offset estimation, the Standard Deviation (STD) of the BeiDou-3 MEO satellite is 0.350?ns, which is an improvement of 0.042?ns over that of the BeiDou-2 MEO satellite. The stabilities of the BeiDou-3 and BeiDou-3e onboard clocks are better than those of BeiDou-2 by factors of 2.84 and 1.61 at an averaging time of 1000 and 10,000?s, respectively.     

混合星座导航卫星广播星历相关问题研究

GPS卫星广播星历参数具有参数少、物理意义明确以及精度高等特点,可以考虑将它应用于包含MEO、IGSO和GEO卫星的混合星座卫星导航系统。分析了采用GPs卫星广播星历参数时MEO、IGSO和GEO卫星的广播星历拟合精度,并且比较分析了在一个卫星的轨道周期内,广播星历参数拟合结果的变化规律。仿真结果表明,MEO、IGSO和GEO卫星的广播星历拟合误差最大在分米量级;MEO和IGSO卫星在一个轨道周期内星历参数拟合结果的变化规律相近,但是与GEO卫星的差异较大。     

绳系微小卫星的旋转编队飞行

针对三星编队飞行问题,提出一种绳系控制方法,在自旋刚体卫星的平衡分析的基础上,建立了Thomson和Likins Pringle平衡构形的绳系三星编队模型,通过对编队系统的稳定性分析得到了两种构形下的稳定条件,并给出了三种控制策略用以解决Likins-Pringle构形不能满足平衡条件的问题。最后经过仿真验证了理论分析的正确性,并对三种控制策略进行了检验,结果表明Thomson构形无须辅助手段,在满足特定条件下可以稳定运行,Likins-Pringle构形采用弹簧系统和喷气辅助绳系控制时满足特定条件也可以稳定运行。     

基于偏心率和倾角矢量的双星隔离策略

针对中国地球静止轨道双星共位的需要, 研究了双星共位的工程实现问题, 提出了一种使用偏心率矢量和倾角矢量联合隔离实现双星共位的方法. 给出了基于偏心率矢量和倾角矢量联合隔离的基本方法、约束方程和工程实现的控制策略, 并通过模拟计算和工程实际应用情况, 验证了该方法的正确性.      

Analysis on navigation accuracy of high orbit spacecraft based on BDS GEO and IGSO satellites

To make up for the insufficiency of earth-based TT&C systems, the use of GNSS technology for high-orbit spacecraft navigation and orbit determination has become a new technology. It is of great value to applying Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO) and Inclined GeoStationary Orbit (IGSO) navigation satellites for supporting the navigation of high-orbit spacecraft since there are three different types of navigation satellites in BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS): Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), GEO and IGSO. This paper conducts simulation experiments based on Two-Line Orbital Element (TLE) data to analyze and demonstrate the role of these satellites in the navigation of high-orbit spacecraft. Firstly, the spacecraft in GEO was used as the target satellite to conduct navigation experiments. Experiments show that for the spacecraft on the GEO orbit, after adding GEO and IGSO respectively on the basis of receiving MEO navigation satellite signals, the accuracies were improved by 7.22 % and 6.06 % respectively. When adding both GEO and IGSO navigation satellites at the same time, the accuracy can reach 16 m. In the second place, navigation and positioning experiments were carried out on three high elliptical orbit (HEO) satellites with different semimajor axis (32037.2 km, 42385.9 km, 67509.6 km). The experiments show that the number of visible satellites has been improved significantly after adding GEO and IGSO navigation satellites at the same time. The visible satellites in these three orbits were improved by 32.84 %, 41.12 % and 37.68 %, respectively compared with only observing MEO satellites.The RMS values of the navigation positioning errors of these three orbits are 25.59 m, 87.58 m and 712.48 m, respectively.     

A fast satellite selection algorithm with floating high cut-off elevation angle based on ADOP for instantaneous multi-GNSS single-frequency relative positioning

With the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) developing, the single-frequency single-epoch multiple GNSSs (multi-GNSS) relative positioning has become feasible. Since a larger number of the observed satellites make the instantaneous (single-epoch) positioning time-consuming, a proper satellite selection is necessary. Among the present methods, the satellite selection with a fixed high cut-off elevation angle (CEA) is least time-consuming. However, there is no criterion how large a fixed high CEA should be to achieve a high success rate and less time consumption. Besides, a fixed high CEA makes the number of visible satellites largely variable, which affects the success rate. Hence, a satellite selection strategy based on ambiguity dilution of precision (ADOP) is proposed. Firstly, the theoretical proof that the ADOP increases the least when removing satellites are all low-elevation-angle satellites is given, which is important to achieve the fast positioning with a high success rate. Then, the threshold $\beta$ is calculated for a different number of satellites and a given ADOP. The satellites are selected based on their elevation angles from high to low until $\beta$ of the selected satellites becomes smaller than the corresponding threshold; this method is called the extended floating CEA multi-GNSS (EF-multi-GNSS). The comparison of the single-frequency single-epoch positioning performance of the EF-multi-GNSS with the satellite selections based on a fixed low CEA (L-multi-GNSS) and a fixed high CEA (H-multi-GNSS) via the relative positioning experiments shows that: (1) the EF-multi-GNSS with a minimal number of satellites can achieve the fast positioning and a high success rate close to 100%. It can greatly reduce the time consumption of the L-multi-GNSS, by about 64.0%, by selecting 12.6 satellites of 23.4 satellites; (2) the floating CEA of EF-multi-GNSS eliminates the consideration how large a fixed high CEA should be, and a CEA larger than the fixed high CEA of the H-multi-GNSS makes it more suitable for different conditions.     

BeiDou-3 orbit and clock quality of the IGS Multi-GNSS Pilot Project

Within the Multi-GNSS Pilot Project (MGEX) of the International GNSS Service (IGS), precise orbit and clock products for the BeiDou-3 global navigation satellite system (BDS-3) are routinely generated by a total of five analysis centers. The processing standards and specific properties of the individual products are reviewed and the BDS-3 orbit and clock product performance is assessed through direct inter-comparison, satellite laser ranging (SLR) residuals, clock stability analysis, and precise point positioning solutions. The orbit consistency evaluated by the signal-in-space range error is on the level of 4–8 cm for the medium Earth orbit satellites whereas SLR residuals have RMS values between 3 and 9 cm. The clock analysis reveals sytematic effects related to the elevation of the Sun above the orbital plane for all ACs pointing to deficiencies in solar radiation pressure modeling. Nevertheless, precise point positioning with the BDS-3 MGEX orbit and clock products results in 3D RMS values between 7 and 8 mm.