Orbit determination for Chang’E-2 lunar probe and evaluation of lunar gravity models

Abstract

The Unified S-Band (USB) ranging/Doppler system and the Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) system as the ground tracking system jointly supported the lunar orbit capture of both Chang’E-2 (CE-2) and Chang’E-1 (CE-1) missions. The tracking system is also responsible for providing precise orbits for scientific data processing. New VLBI equipment and data processing strategies have been proposed based on CE-1 experiences and implemented for CE-2. In this work the role VLBI tracking data played was reassessed through precision orbit determination (POD) experiments for CE-2. Significant improvement in terms of both VLBI delay and delay rate data accuracy was achieved with the noise level of X-band band-width synthesis delay data reaching 0.2–0.3 ns. Short-arc orbit determination experiments showed that the combination of only 15 min’s range and VLBI data was able to improve the accuracy of 3 h’s orbit using range data only by a 1–1.5 order of magnitude, confirming a similar conclusion for CE-1. Moreover, because of the accuracy improvement, VLBI data was able to contribute to CE-2’s long-arc POD especially in the along-track and orbital normal directions. Orbital accuracy was assessed through the orbital overlapping analysis (2 h arc overlapping for 18 h POD arc). Compared with about 100 m position error of CE-1’s 200 km200 km lunar orbit, for CE-2’s 100 km100 km lunar orbit, the position errors were better than 31 and 6 m in the radial direction, and for CE-2’s 15 km100 km orbit, the position errors were better than 45 and 12 m in the radial direction. In addition, in trying to analyze the Delta Differential One-Way Ranging (DOR) experiments data we concluded that the accuracy of DOR delay was dramatically improved with the noise level better than 0.1 ns and systematic errors better calibrated, and the Short-arc POD tests with DOR data showed excellent results. Although unable to support the development of an independent lunar gravity model, the tracking data of CE-2 provided evaluations of different lunar gravity models through POD. It is found that for the 100 km100 km lunar orbit, with a degree and order expansion up to 165, JPL’s gravity model LP165P did not show noticeable improvement over Japan’s SGM series models (100×100), but for the 15 km×100 km lunar orbit, a higher degree-order model can significantly improve the orbit accuracy. Chang’E-2, VLBI, orbit determination, lunar gravity field