Motion Prediction of a Free-Floating Noncooperative Target Considering J2 Perturbation

Motion prediction of space noncooperative target is an important issue for spacecraft on-orbit service. After obtaining high-precision motion prediction results, the chaser can efficiently plan a motion trajectory to approach the target and then capture it. In this paper, a motion prediction method considering J2 perturbation is proposed for a free-floating noncooperative target. The core idea of this method is to identify dynamic parameters of the target, and then realize the motion prediction through a dynamic model of the target that considering J2 perturbation. In the identification of the dynamic parameters, inertia parameters of the target are preliminarily identified first, then a noise-adaptive unscented Kalman filter (UKF) is applied to roughly identify the dynamic parameters, and finally, the identification precision is further improved through optimization. At the end of this paper, the significance of considering J2 perturbation is demonstrated by numerical simulations, and the effectiveness of the proposed method is verified. Simulation results indicate that J2 perturbation has a great influence on the motion prediction of the target and that the proposed method can yield long-time high-precision motion prediction results. Specifically, under the simulation conditions of this paper, the predicted time obtained by the proposed method is longer than 200 s, and the errors of the motion prediction results of the target's attitude and position are less than 2 deg and 0.02 m, respectively.

A set of orbital elements to fully represent the zonal harmonics around an oblate celestial body

This work introduces a new set of orbital elements to fully represent the zonal harmonics problem around an oblate celestial body. This new set of orbital elements allows to obtain a complete linear system for the unperturbed problem and, in addition, a complete polynomial system when considering the perturbation produced by the zonal harmonics from the gravitational force of an oblate celestial body. These orbital elements present no singularities and are able to represent any kind of orbit, including elliptic, parabolic and hyperbolic orbits. In addition, an application to this formulation of the Poincaré-Lindstedt perturbation method is included to obtain an approximate first order solution of the problem for the case of the J2 perturbation.

Study the Influence of Atmospheric Drag and J2 Effect in a Close-proximity Operation at LEO

In this paper is to assess the mission stability and the influence of J2 effect and aerodynamic forces. To maintain the relative motion of satellites by using a feedback control law for tracking error bound in the presence of J2 perturbation. A constant relative orbit under the effect of earth oblateness and conservative forces is referred as J2 and targeting the presence of atmospheric drag. Although, Schweighart and Sedwick control strategy for satellite relative motion is considering both lift and drag forces. The simulation result shows a better performance with high accuracy than an elliptical orbit under J2 perturbation and atmospheric drag along in-track formation. The algorithm and control strategies is useful tools for analysing a future space mission.