Influence of atmospheric density and area-to-mass errors on orbit prediction accuracy

Abstract

Abstract Due to the fact that the space is becoming increasingly congested, there is a high requirement for the orbit prediction accuracy of space targets to support collision warning tasks. This is especially true for space debris with high area-to-mass ratio and low orbit altitude. This paper focuses on the along-track position error caused by the atmospheric density error and area-to-mass ratio error for targets with near-circular orbit in the orbit prediction. We derive a semi-analytical expression to describe the along-track position error, and the expression’s validity is evaluated by a goodness-of-fit index compared with the simulated “true” along-track position error. The simulation is based on Encke’s special perturbation method, in which the drag error is treated as a perturbation. The drag error is modeled by the difference between the JB2008 and MISIS density model and the sinusoidal oscillation error model concerning the inexact area-to-mass ratio. Furthermore, targets with various orbit altitudes ranging from 300km to 800km are selected to investigate whether the along-track position error can meet the collision warning requirements.