Orbit Determination and Differential-drag Control of Planet Labs Cubesat Constellations
Space Physics
2015-09-11 v1 Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Abstract
We present methodology and mission results from orbit determination of Planet Labs nanosatellites and differential-drag control of their relative motion. Orbit determination (OD) is required on Planet Labs satellites to accurately predict the positioning of satellites during downlink passes and we present a scalable OD solution for large fleets of small satellites utilizing two-way ranging. In the second part of this paper, we present mission results from relative motion differential-drag control of a constellation of satellites deployed in the same orbit.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1509.03270,
title = {Orbit Determination and Differential-drag Control of Planet Labs Cubesat Constellations},
author = {Cyrus Foster and Henry Hallam and James Mason},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1509.03270},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
13 pages, 9 figures. Presented at AIAA Astrodynamics Specialist Conference in Vale, CO, August 2015