EMPHEMERIS COMPRESSION USING MULTIPLE FOURIER SERIES

An ephemeris compression method has been developed which uses multiple Fourier series. The compression itself is performed upon the Cartesian residuals which result from differencing a numerically integrated ephemeris with an ephemeris generated by a widely-used analytical propagator, such as PPT. An accurate estimate of the ephemeris may then be generated by reconstructing the residuals from the Fourier coefficients and superposing these with the analytical propagator’s ephemeris. Statistical results from testing the method with the satellite catalog are presented.