Celestial Navigation for Deep-Space Orbit Determination
Application to an Asteroid Main Belt Exploration Mission
L. Hinueber (TU Delft - Aerospace Engineering)
D. Dirkx – Mentor (TU Delft - Aerospace Engineering)
M. Pugliatti – Mentor
W. van der Wal – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Aerospace Engineering)
S. Gehly – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Aerospace Engineering)
More Info
expand_more
Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.
Abstract
Traditional interplanetary orbit determination relies on Earth-based radiometric tracking, for which demand has increased in recent years and is projected to rise further in the future, resulting in oversubscribed ground station networks. Meanwhile, autonomous operations are desirable for faster response times to off-nominal events.
This work investigates the use of celestial navigation from asteroid beacon observations for the cruise phase orbit determination of an exploration mission to the main asteroid belt.
Using covariance analysis, the expected performance of celestial navigation is evaluated during the cruise phase, studied for its sensitivity to the model parameters and compared to traditional radiometric tracking. Under the high dynamical uncertainty associated with solar electric propulsion, beacon navigation yields comparable formal uncertainties to the baseline radiometric tracking setup for trajectory segments within the main asteroid belt. Beacon-augmented orbit determination could therefore potentially reduce the required tracking time, while achieving similar cruise phase performance.
Files
File under embargo until 26-11-2026