Fundamentals of Orbit Determination

О курсе

Orbit determination is the process of estimating a spacecraft's trajectory from a set of imperfect tracking observations. It is a foundational component of every spaceflight mission from GPS to Earth-observation satellites to planetary missions like OSIRIS-REx and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. This course builds the mathematical machinery on which every orbit-determination process sits: dynamical and measurement models and their partial derivatives, and the representation and propagation of uncertainty. The estimation algorithms themselves (batch least squares, Kalman filtering, smoothing) are covered in the follow-on courses of this specialization; here we develop the foundation they all share. Across five modules you will build force models for two-body and perturbed orbits; derive analytical partial derivatives for both the dynamics and the measurements; develop the equations and Jacobians for range, range-rate, angles, and other common tracking observables; map uncertainty through the dynamics using linear covariance mapping and state noise compensation; augment the state with estimated parameters and dynamic model compensation accelerations; and synthesize everything into an end-to-end Monte Carlo orbit-determination project.

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Jay W. McMahon

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