The results of a flight experiment aboard the International Space Station to study the effect of multipath on navigation, attitude control and rendezvous using measurements of satellite navigation equipment

Abstract

The data obtained in the flight experiment aboard the International Space Station (ISS) simultaneously from three navigation receivers (NR) for different configurations of the main reflecting elements of the ISS — the solar arrays (SA) of the US segment of the ISS — are analyzed. It is shown that the multipath effect, caused by NS signals reflected off the SA, leads to significant errors in phase measurements, in determining pseudorange (PR), ISS coordinates, and velocity. These errors are significantly different for different NRs and depend heavily on the configuration of the solar panels. Some methods are proposed to significantly reduce the multipath effect on the tasks of navigation, attitude control and relative navigation in the process of rendezvous. The proposed methods have been tested on the measurements obtained from the satellite navigation equipment (SNE) during the flight experiment. Real accuracy characteristics of the navigation tasks to be solved have been determined. They are expected to be implemented in the SNE which is being developed for Soyuz and Progress spacecraft.