Orbit determination for lunar farside probe based on relay communication satellite

This paper studies autonomous Orbit Determination (OD) process to track a lunar farside probe via a relay communication satellite. The feasibility of the scheme is verified via observation analysis. Orbit determination accuracies and converging velocities calculated by different initial position and velocity errors, different noises and different halo orbits are compared. The extended Kalman filter is used to process the measurement data. According to error analysis, the accuracy of the real-Time states of the lunar farside probe can be achieved on the order of tens of meters with position in quite a short period. The results also show that, for a lunar probe on a relatively high altitude orbit, the initial errors can largely affect the OD performance, while the noise and the size of the halo orbit have little or no influences on it.