Pose measurement and motion estimation of non-cooperative satellite based on spatial circle feature

Malfunctioned satellites have seriously threatened orbital safety, and the capture of these satellites is of great significance. The pose measurement and the motion estimation of the tumbling satellite is the premise of capture. In this paper, the docking ring of the satellite is identified, which is equivalent to a spatial circle. Combined with the nozzle feature, the pose duality of the spatial circle can be eliminated. And the measurement accuracy is improved by minimizing the reprojection error of the docking ring and the nozzle. Due to the symmetry of the docking ring, the measured pose has only five degrees of freedom, losing the degree of freedom of rotation around the normal vector. In the motion estimation algorithm, the observability of the tumbling motion is firstly analyzed, then an error-state Kalman filter with inertia ratio constraints is designed. To improve the convergence speed and stability of the filter, a rough estimation algorithm of filter initial value based on linear term extraction and particle swarm optimization is proposed. The effectiveness of the pose measurement and motion estimation method is verified by simulations.