METHOD OF ORIENTATION AND INDEPENDENT NAVIGATION FOR SPACE VEHICLE INTENDED FOR EARTH AND NEAR SPACE MONITORING Russian patent published in 2009 - IPC B64G1/10 G01C21/02 

FIELD: aerospace engineering.

SUBSTANCE: astrohardware and Earth sounding hardware data is used to accurately determine spacecraft orbit and coordinates and orient it. Sounding data, apart from its designed purpose, is subjected to additional processing to be made in separate frames of the Earth image. This allows determining direction to the Earth center ("to plot local vertical"), correct current spacecraft coordinates and its orientation. Coordinates derived from combination of the Earth sounding area frames on one and several orbital passes are processed together to produce orbit parametres. Orbit parametre estimations are used for navigation-ballistic computations effected aboard the spacecraft till updating at another flight path. Note here that to do with aforesaid tasks, spacecraft needs no usual navigation data from ground appliances or satellite navigation systems, e.g. GLONASS. It does not required special means of orientation relative to the Earth centre (or horizon), say, infrared vertical. Model analyses have shown good chances of providing high accuracy in spacecraft current orientation and coordinate data on high-elliptical or geo-stationary orbit.

EFFECT: expanded operating performances in independent pilotless operation.

6 cl, 3 dwg