Autonomous relative orbit determination for satellite formation flying on basis of orbit element differences

An efficient approach for autonomous relative navigation of satellite formation flying was developed. Instead of using the commonly-used Hill's equations, the relative motion orbits were described in terms of specific orbit element differences, and a direct method to map orbit element differences to their corresponding local Cartesian coordinates was cited. Inter-satellite distance measurement as well as orientation measurement was chosen as observation information, and the relative orbit states estimation was achieved through an extended Kalman filter design. A numerical simulation illustrates the validity of this navigation method.