Date of Award:

5-2010

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Science (MS)

Department:

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Committee Chair(s)

David K. Geller

Committee

David K. Geller

Committee

Charles M. Swenson

Committee

Stephen A. Whitmore

Abstract

Angles-only navigation is simple, robust, and well proven in many applications. However, it is sometimes ill-conditioned for orbital rendezvous and proximity operations because, without a direct range measurement, the distance to approaching satellites must be estimated by firing thrusters and observing the change in the target's bearing. Nevertheless, the simplicity of angles-only navigation gives it great appeal. The viability of this technique for relative navigation is examined by building a high-fidelity simulation and evaluating the sensitivity of the system to sensor errors. The relative performances of square-root filtering methods, including Potter, Carlson, and UD factorization filters, are compared to the conventional and Joseph formulations. Filter performance is evaluated during closed-loop "station keeping" operations in simulation.

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Comments

This work was revised and made publicly available electronically on August 1, 2011

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