A Novel Differential Doppler Measurement-Aided Autonomous Celestial Navigation Method for Spacecraft During Approach Phase

• Published in: IEEE transactions on aerospace and electronic systems Vol. 53; no. 2; pp. 587 - 597
• Main Authors: Ning, Xiaolin, Gui, Mingzhen, Fang, Jiancheng, Dai, Yu, Liu, Gang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.04.2017; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Autonomous navigation; Celestial navigation; deep-space exploration; Doppler effect; Doppler measurement; Extraterrestrial measurements; Feasibility; Mars; Navigation; Orbit determination; solar differential doppler; Space exploration; Space navigation; Space vehicles; Sun; unscented Kalman filter (UKF); Variation
• ISSN: 0018-9251; 1557-9603
• DOI: 10.1109/TAES.2017.2651558

The combination of celestial measurement and ground Doppler measurement has been successfully used for orbit determination in many deep-space exploration missions. However, one of the inherent drawbacks of ground tracking is the long communication delay. Using the Doppler measurement from the sun instead of the ground station is a feasible strategy for real-time navigation, but the accuracy of this Doppler measurement is affected by the frequency fluctuation of the solar spectrum. To solve this problem, a differential Doppler measurement-aided celestial navigation method is proposed in this paper, which uses the differential Doppler measurement to reduce the influence caused by instability of the solar spectrum frequency and improve the navigation accuracy. Simulations demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of this method.