A Novel Autonomous Celestial Navigation Method Using Solar Oscillation Time Delay Measurement

Abstract

Solar oscillation，causing a dramatic variation of the sunlight spectral central wavelengths and intensity during a short time，has been studied in detail over the years，both observationally and theoretically. Through detecting the sunlight spectral central wavelengths and intensity and recording the moment when solar oscillation occurs，the time delay between the sunlight coming from the Sun directly and the sunlight reflected by a celestial body such as the satellite of planet or asteroid can be obtained. Because the solar oscillation time delay is determined by the relative positions of the spacecraft，reflective celestial body and the Sun，it can be adopted as the navigation measurement to provide the spacecraft's position information. In this paper，a novel celestial navigation method using solar oscillation time delay measurement is proposed. The implicit measurement model of time delay is built，and the Implicit Unscented Kalman Filter （IUKF） is applied. Simulation results indicate that the position error and velocity error of the proposed method for the transfer orbit are about 3.55 km and 0.077 m/s respectively，and for the surrounding orbit are about 1.76 km and 1.57 m/s respectively. The impact of the three factors on the navigation performance is also investigated.

Keywords

autonomous navigation / celestial navigation / solar oscillation / time delay / implicit UKF