Solution set on the natural satellite formation orbits under first-order earth's non-spherical perturbation

Using the reference orbital element approach, the precise governing equations for the relative motion of formation flight are formulated. A number of ideal formations with respect to an elliptic orbit can be designed based on the relative motion analysis from the equations. The features of the oscillating reference orbital elements are studied by using the perturbation theory. The changes in the relative orbit under perturbation are divided into three categories, termed scale enlargement, drift and distortion respectively. By properly choosing the initial mean orbital elements for the leader and follower satellites, the deviations from originally regular formation orbit caused by the perturbation can be suppressed. Thereby the natural formation is set up. It behaves either like non-disturbed or need little control to maintain. The presented reference orbital element approach highlights the kinematics properties of the relative motion and is convenient to incorporate the results of perturbation analysis on orbital elements. This method of formation design has advantages over other methods in seeking natural formation and in initializing formation.

Orbital reference frame estimation with power spectral density constraints for drag-free satellites

The drag-free satellites are widely used in the field of fundamental science as they enable the high-precision measurement in pure gravity fields. This paper investigates the estimation of local orbital reference frame(LORF) for drag-free satellites. An approach, taking account of the combination of the minimum estimation error and power spectral density(PSD) constraint in frequency domain, is proposed. Firstly, the relationship between eigenvalues of estimator and transfer function is built to analyze the suppression and amplification effect on input signals and obtain the eigenvalue range. Secondly, an optimization model for state estimator design with minimum estimation error in time domain and PSD constraint in frequency domain is established. It is solved by the sequential quadratic programming(SQP) algorithm. Finally, the orbital reference frame estimation of low-earth-orbit satellite is taken as an example, and the estimator of minimum variance with PSD constraint is designed and analyzed using the method proposed in this paper.