Pre-Flight calculation of the orbital parameters of a small satellite

A A Spiridonov,V A Saetchnikov,V E Cherny,D V Ushakov

doi:10.1063/5.0074461

Abstract

The problem of pre-flight calculation of the orbital parameters of the first nanosatellite of the Belarusian State University CubeBel-1 before launching from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China has been solved. The first nanosatellite passes over the Belarusian State University ground station were predicted based on the perturbed circular motion model. The initial TLE file was generated and published on the Internet. This allowed dozens of radio amateurs from 5 continents successfully to receive the nanosatellite telemetry on the first day after the launch on October 29, 2018 at 00:43:13.576 UTC, and the Belarusian State University ground station was the first to decode the CubeBel-1 telemetry. The obtained initial parameters were compared with the calculations in the SGP 4 model. It is shown that the absolute errors in predicting the elevation and azimuth of nanosatellite CubeBel-1 did not exceed 2o and 3o, respectively, and the absolute error in predicting the Doppler frequency shift of telemetry signals did not exceed 350 Hz, which, with appropriate receiver settings, is sufficient for successful reception of telemetry signals of satellite and their decoding.

Highlights

When universities develop their educational small satellite (SS), preflight evaluation of their orbital parameters is an urgent problem
The orbital parameters from the satellite’s two-line elements (TLE) files for the first 20 days of the flight were averaged to avoid large errors in further modeling. This is due to the large spread of the satellite orbital parameters in the first days of the flight, obtained from the TLE files of their relative true values
Pre-flight calculation of the orbital parameters of a SS was carried out using the numerical analysis of 5 satellite launches with two-stage Long March 2C and 2D launch vehicles from the Chinese Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in 2018

Summary

INTRODUCTION

When universities develop their educational small satellite (SS), preflight evaluation of their orbital parameters is an urgent problem. Before launching the university nanosatellite CubeBel-1, the task was set based on the analysis of launches from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center using two-stage Long March 2C and 2D launch vehicles to a sun-synchronous orbit to predict the orbital parameters and the first nanosatellite passes over the university GS, to create an initial TLE file and publish it on the Internet for the possibility of receiving by the international network of receiving stations Satnogs and radio amateurs around the world This analysis will make it possible to quickly change the TLE file when the launch time changes, to solve the problem of identifying a nanosatellite in a group launch of 8 satellites. Since the main problem to be solved is numerically to simulate the parameters of the first nanosatellite passes over the BSU GS, based on the obtained state vector (1), using the model of the perturbed circular motion of the SS [5, 6, 11], to predict the elevation el, azimuth az DQG'RSSOHU IUHTXHQF\ VKLIW ǻfcalc of radio telemetry signals over the GS (at time intervals where el >0)

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

13 January

CONCLUSION