Spacecraft autonomous navigation via inter-spacecraft relaying communication for Mars prober

Abstract

With the development of deep space exploration, the requirements of accuracy and real time for navigation services become higher, so that the traditional ground based network can hardly meet the user's needs. And the accuracy of existing autonomous navigation method, such as celestial navigation, cannot meet the requirement either. In order to improve the performance of autonomous navigation for deep space prober, a navigation method based on inter-satellite link and starlight angle is proposed in this article. The prober determines its position by communicating with other spacecrafts and observing the star. This navigation method is illustrated by an example of Mars exploration mission. To verify the feasibility of this method, simulation is used to analyze its accuracy in this paper. The results show that the Mars prober can reach the position accuracy of 100m, which is much higher than the traditional celestial navigation which only measure the starlight angle. Meanwhile, the selection strategy of communication object is given after analyzing the variance matrix at steady-state. The accuracy of this method will be improved along with the increasing of onboard spacecrafts. This kind of autonomous navigation will significantly contribute to the deep space exploration mission in the future.