Three-Axes Attitude Determination of Spacecraft Using a Laser

A new method for attitude determination of spacecraft is proposed. The distinctive feature of this method is the ability to determine with high accuracy three elementary angles of the attitude by detection of the electromagnetic wave transmission from a single point. The system consists of a transmitter of a linearly polarized laser beam on the earth (or spacecraft) and receiving equipment on a relevant spacecraft. When the system is used for geosynchronous satellites, the possible accuracies of determination are 10-4 rad or higher for the angles which correspond to roll and pitch, and 10-2 rad or higher for the angle which corresponds to yaw, with the period of 1 s. The system margin for atmospheric attenuation is estimated to be about 50 dB (midnight) to about 20 dB (midday) on the basis of commercially available components. Consequently, it becomes possible to orient antennas or detectors toward arbitrary points around the laser transmitting point on the earth with a high pointing accuracy.     

Improvement of Satellite Tracking Accuracy Using Optical Observations

A method to improve satellite tracking accuracy is presented and discussed theoretically and experimentally in terms of two parts: correction for errors of the tracking system and correction of satellite orbit predictions. In the first part, it is concluded that the pointing error of the tracking system can be determined accurately using data from stellar observations, so that correction is possible with an accuracy of about 0.001°. In the second part, it is shown that apparent errors of satellite orbital elements can be deduced from the optical observation of one orbit, and one can track the satellite after the correction with high accuracy for several subsequent orbits. The accuracy is 0.1-0.2 mrad or better for satellites at 1000 km altitude when given orbit prediction accuracy is approximately 1°.