Analysis of the orbit lifetime of CubeSats in low Earth orbits including periodic variation in drag due to attitude motion

It is estimated that more than 22,300 human-made objects are in orbit around the Earth, with a total mass above 8,400,000 kg. Around 89% of these objects are non-operational and without control, which makes them to be considered orbital debris. These numbers consider only objects with dimensions larger than 10 cm. Besides those numbers, there are also about 2000 operational satellites in orbit nowadays. The space debris represents a hazard to operational satellites and to the space operations. A major concern is that this number is growing, due to new launches and particles generated by collisions. Another important point is that the development of CubeSats has increased exponentially in the last years, increasing the number of objects in space, mainly in the Low Earth Orbits (LEO). Due to the short operational time, CubeSats boost the debris population. One of the requirements for space debris mitigation in LEO is the limitation of the orbital lifetime of the satellites, which needs to be lower than 25 years. However, there are space debris with longer estimated decay time. In LEÓs, the influence of the atmospheric drag is the main orbital perturbation, and is used in maneuvers to increment the losses in the satellite orbital energy, to locate satellites in constellations and to accelerate the decay.The goal of the present research is to study the influence of aerodynamic rotational maneuver in the CubeSat?s orbital lifetime. The rotational axis is orthogonal to the orbital plane of the CubeSat, which generates variations in the ballistic coefficient along the trajectory. The maneuver is proposed to accelerate the decay and to mitigate orbital debris generated by non-operational CubeSats. The panel method is selected to determine the drag coefficient as a function of the flow incident angle and the spinning rate. The pressure distribution is integrated from the satellite faces at hypersonic rarefied flow to calculate the drag coefficient. The mathematical model considers the gravitational potential of the Earth and the deceleration due to drag. To analyze the effects of the rotation during the decay, multiple trajectories were propagated, comparing the results obtained assuming a constant drag coefficient with trajectories where the drag coefficient changes periodically. The initial perigees selected were lower than 400 km of altitude with eccentricities ranging from 0.00 to 0.02. Six values for the angular velocity were applied in the maneuver. The technique of rotating the spacecraft is an interesting solution to increase the orbit decay of a CubeSat without implementing additional de-orbit devices. Significant changes in the decay time are presented due to the increase of the mean drag coefficient calculated by the panel method, when the maneuver is applied, reducing the orbital lifetime, however the results are independent of the angular velocity of the satellite.     

Impact of covariance information of kinematic positions on orbit reconstruction and gravity field recovery

Gravity missions are equipped with onboard Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers for precise orbit determination (POD) and for the extraction of the long wavelength part of the Earth’s gravity field. As positions of low Earth orbiters (LEOs) may be determined from GPS measurements at each observation epoch by geometric means only, it is attractive to derive such kinematic positions in a first step and to use them in a second step as pseudo-observations for gravity field determination. The drawback of not directly using the original GPS measurements is, however, that kinematic positions are correlated due to the ambiguities in the GPS carrier phase observations, which in principle requires covariance information be taken into account. We use GRACE data to show that dynamic or reduced-dynamic orbit parameters are not optimally reconstructed from kinematic positions when only taking epoch-wise covariance information into account, but that essentially the same orbit quality can be achieved as when directly using the GPS measurements, if correlations in time are taken into account over sufficiently long intervals. For orbit reconstruction covariances have to be considered up to one revolution period to avoid ambiguity-induced variations of kinematic positions being erroneously interpreted as orbital variations. For gravity field recovery the advantage is, however, not very pronounced.     

基于动量轮转速标定的轨道控制方法研究

某地球同步三轴卫星因故障导致推力器工作效率不稳定,使得采用原有方案进行向西轨道控制时姿态变化大,控制准确度降低.针对上述问题,通过分析卫星用于姿态控制的偏置动量轮的控制规律,利用星体角动量守恒条件,建立了偏置动量轮转速变化与轨道半长轴变化之间的相关性数学模型,提出了一种改进的基于偏置动量轮转速标定的轨道控制方法,同时结合姿态的稳定变化制定了轨道控制实施方案,并将其应用于实际卫星轨道控制中,取得了良好的控制效果.改进的控制方法提高了轨道控制的准确率,使得半长轴误差幅度由最大60％提高到0.2％左右,增加了姿态的稳定性,使得俯仰姿态变化幅度由最大0.7°减小到0.2°左右,降低了控制风险,减轻了地面控制人员的负担.     

Estimation of the Love and Shida numbers: h2, l2 using SLR data for the low satellites

In this paper we present results for the global elastic parameters: Love number h₂ and Shida number l₂ derived from the analysis of Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR) data. SLR data for the two low satellites STELLA (H = 800 km) and STARLETTE (H = 810 km) observed during 2.5 years from January 3, 2005 until July 1, 2007 with 18 globally distributed ground stations were analyzed. The analysis was done separately for the two satellites. We do a sequential analysis and study the stability and convergence of the estimates as a function of length of the data set used.     

低轨卫星多普勒频移特性的快速计算

地面站利用低轨卫星进行通信时,地面接收站接收信号存在明显的多普勒频移现象。为描述多普勒频移特性,首先分析卫星轨道偏心率对多普勒特性曲线的影响,分析表明：轨道偏心率越大,地面站接收信号多普勒变化率越大。其次,推导了卫星多普勒频移的计算表达式,并讨论了低轨卫星多普勒频移特性曲线的快速计算。仿真计算结果表明,该算法可以很好地描述任意低轨道卫星多普勒频移特性,并明显缩短了精确算法的计算时间,对于10 000km轨道高度卫星,算法置信度可达99%以上。     

应用于卫星自主任务调度的改进遗传算法

针对具有侧摆能力的对地观测卫星的自主任务调度问题,对卫星自主任务调度问题和约束条件进行了描述,针对卫星自主任务调度NP-hard的特点,构建了基于目标收益及多约束卫星任务调度模型。设计了一种改进的遗传算法,从遗传操作的各个部分进行算法优化。首先将小区间法应用于初始种群生成,保证了种群的多样性,并且交叉和变异算子均引入自适应概率;同时采用两代竞争技术来避免“早熟”现象,提高算法的效率和鲁棒性。算法还采用最优保留策略用来保存进化中的最优解,使得算法收敛于全局最优。对局部多冲突观测任务应用该改进遗传算法,并针对区域密集目标的观测问题设计了仿真试验,与传统模拟退火算法及免疫蚁群遗传混合算法进行了比较,验证了该算法的有效性和收敛效果。     

卫星天线极化隔离度在轨测试方法与误差分析

建立卫星天线极化隔离度在轨测试的全程链路模型,分析交叉极化分量产生的机理,给出一种符号表示方法标识由各天线馈源激励产生的各段链路上的信号。分析和实际测试结果表明,主极化和交叉极化接收通道都会在2个相近的频点上产生多个极化分量矢量合成的信号,如果频谱仪分辨率设置不当,则得不到正确的测试结果。由于无法完全分离地面天线和卫星天线产生的交叉极化分量,卫星天线极化隔离度受到地面天线极化隔离度的影响。此外,还描述了高精度测量的卫星天线极化隔离度在轨测试流程和误差分析方法。     

低空目标电波折射修正中地球半径计算方法

在防御体系中雷达对低空目标一般呈俯视状况,因此在电波折射修正中必须把地球视为椭球,而不能视为圆球体,否则会产生很大误差.本文通过雷达测量参数和大地坐标与空间坐标的转换,给出了计算雷达电波射线上任意一点对应地球半径的方法.     

Predicting Earth orientation changes from global forecasts of atmosphere-hydrosphere dynamics

Effective Angular Momentum (EAM) functions obtained from global numerical simulations of atmosphere, ocean, and land surface dynamics are routinely processed by the Earth System Modelling group at Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum. EAM functions are available since January 1976 with up to 3?h temporal resolution. Additionally, 6?days-long EAM forecasts are routinely published every day. Based on hindcast experiments with 305 individual predictions distributed over 15?months, we demonstrate that EAM forecasts improve the prediction accuracy of the Earth Orientation Parameters at all forecast horizons between 1 and 6?days. At day 6, prediction accuracy improves down to 1.76 mas for the terrestrial pole offset, and 2.6 mas for $\mathrm{\Delta }$UT1, which correspond to an accuracy increase of about 41% over predictions published in Bulletin A by the International Earth Rotation and Reference System Service.     

地球观测网络成像任务可调度性预测方法

为了能够快速、合理地分配成像任务,充分发挥对地观测网络的观测效能,对成像任务可调度性预测问题进行了研究,提出一种由协同任务分配组件、任务调度组件、特征提取组件以及任务可调度性预测组件所构成的组件化求解架构。在成像卫星经典调度模型的基础上,提取成像任务特征,并采用变隐含层节点的反向传播（BP）神经网络集成技术求解成像任务可调度性问题。仿真结果表明,集成BP神经网络的平均预测准确度可以达到85%以上。