Orbit determination of Earth-Moon libration point navigation constellation based on Inter-satellite links

Abstract

Earth-Moon libration point navigation constellation has a merit of fully covering the cislunar space and providing navigation services with merely a small number of satellites. Furthermore, this type of constellation itself can achieve orbit determination by using only its Inter-satellite links (ISL) owing to the well-known gravitational asymmetry near the libration points. This paper adopts a representative four-satellite navigation constellation including three satellites located near the libration point L3, L4, L5, and an extra one in Distant Retrograde Orbit (DRO), and studies the orbit determination accuracy of the constellation under two conditions: establishing ISLs within itself (called Solely libration point satellites) and establishing additional ISLs with BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) (called Libration + BeiDou satellites). The simulation results indicate that, for the Solely libration point satellites scenario with the 1 m range error and solar radiation pressure (SRP) error with the level of 10% deviation between ball model and macro model, the final orbit accuracies for L3, L4, L5, and DRO satellites can respectively achieve 11.3 m, 12.7 m, 12.6 m, and 7.3 m. Reducing the link interval can significantly shorten the arc length to achieve final accuracy, whileas it has less impact on the final orbital accuracy. When the link interval is set as 240, 60, 10, and 2 min, the arc lengths at the final accuracy of better than 15 m are about 35, 29, 23, and 20 days, respectively. To balance the communication burden and the orbit determination arc length, the recommended ISL building interval is 10 min. Errors coming from range measurement model and dynamic model, in addition, are key factors in orbit determination, which can result in meters to tens of meters of orbital accuracy. For the Libration + BeiDou satellites scenario, the augmented ISLs to BDS can substantially improve constellation orbital accuracy and shorten the orbit determination arc length. When the DRO satellite attached to the Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO), Inclined Geosynchronous Orbit (IGSO), and Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) satellites of BDS respectively, the improved accuracy are 37.1%, 61.2%, and 42.2%, while the shortened arc length are 20.1%, 28.3%, and 28.1%, respectively. The research findings presented in this paper can serve as a reference for the construction and assessment of navigation constellations in the Earth-Moon system.