Autonomous Orbit Determination in Cislunar Space

Abstract

Autonomous orbit determination could help reducing the growing load on ground-based deep space networks. For small satellites, orbit determination based solely on inter-satellite measurements could be a strong alternative for conventional ground-based navigation support. The possibilities of this autonomous orbit determination method are investigated, using LUMIO and Lunar Pathfinder mission aspects. The feasibility strongly depends on the estimated two-way ranging error, so the dependency between the radio parameters and performance in autonomous orbit determination is explored. To estimate the two-way error a link budget analysis is performed in which the bit rate and antenna gain are free parameters. In an iterative process, the radio parameters are obtained in which autonomous orbit determination can be performed in compliance with LUMIO’s mission requirements.