A spherical micro satellite design and detection method for upper atmospheric density estimation

Abstract

A spherical microsatellite, aimed at technology verification of upper atmospheric density detection and precision orbit determination in low Earth orbit (LEO), has been developed by Tsinghua University and is scheduled to launch in the second half of 2019. In order to reduce the influence of other nonconservative forces, the area-to-mass ratio of the satellite was designed to ensure that the aerodynamic drag of the satellite is more than one to two orders of magnitude greater than the solar pressure perturbation. The influence of the components of the antenna, separation support, and solar cell arrays (SCAs) on the spherical structure for the area-to-mass ratio is reduced by reasonable design of the satellite flight attitude. In addition, a novel method has been developed to estimate and correct the parameters for atmospheric density (correlated to the drag) calculation, using precise orbit data (POD) obtained from an onboard dual-frequency global position system (GPS) receiver. The method is used to obtain the partial derivative of the total acceleration of the satellite to the initial state (position, velocity) and Harris-Priester (HP) density model parameters (antapex and apex density). Further, the least squares estimation method is used to solve the overdetermined linear equations and obtain the change of initial state of the satellite and the HP density model parameters relative to change of the satellite state. The validity of this method has been verified through numerical simulations with the parametric setup of the satellite. The estimated density precision was found to be higher than two to three orders of the initial HP density model with continuous iteration.