PUVM2-based Combined Orbit Determination Strategy for the Space Tracking Ship

The photoelectric theodolite is a kind of optical system which can provide much higher precision range and angle measurement in comparison with the radio devices. With the application of theodolite in satellite tracking by using the space tracking ship, a new combined orbit determination strategy is proposed which uses the range measurement of unified S band system (USB) and the angle measurement of theodolite. The improved perturbation unit vector method is applied for the initial orbit determination. The new strategy is demonstrated with the real data of a near-circular orbit China's satellite mission in 2016. With the angle measurement of theodolite, the initial orbit determination is improved greatly which show the validity of this new strategy. The strategy is tested by using multi-arc data for numerical orbit improvements as well. In the numerical method, the Adams-Cowell algorithm is used to determine the orbit elements. The precision of the orbit improvement results are at the same level by using all the measurement of USB and the new strategy. The comparison analysis shows the new strategy is more suitable for the initial orbit determination when the amount of data is small.