Abstract
Traditional autonomous celestial navigation usually uses astronomical angle as measurement, which is a function of spacecraft’s position and can’t resolve the spacecraft’s velocity directly. To solve this problem, velocity measurement by stellar spectra shift is proposed in this paper. The autonomous celestial integrated navigation method is derived by combining velocity measurement with angle measurement, which can ensure the long-term high accuracy, real-time and continuous navigation performance for deep space exploration (DSE) missions. The observability of the integrated navigation system is analyzed. Moreover, the design of doppler navigator and hardware in-the-loop simulation system are described. Finally, a simulation example is employed to demonstration the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed navigation algorithm.
1. Introduction
Compared with near-Earth missions, higher navigation performance is required by deep space exploration (DSE) missions for the complicated environment such as long flight distance, many unknown factors of the environment, complicated flight procedures, high communication delay and loss, tracking blind and celestial shelter, etc. Autonomous celestial navigation is a key technology that determines the success of the deep space exploration missions [1].
Recently, DSE missions implemented aboard most of the deep space probes possess partial autonomous navigation ability. In addition, part of the landing patrol robot also has the function of autonomous navigation and control [2,3]. The autonomous navigation method has become an effective supplementary method of ground measure [4]. There are many limitations in ground radio navigation such as real-time performance, operation cost and satellite resources, etc. Fortunately, autonomous navigation in DSE can not only overcome these limitations, but also improve the independent survival ability of a deep space probe [5]. Besides, if the accuracy and continuity of DSE navigation can be enhanced, the reliability of mission success can be enhanced as well. In some special flight phases, such as closing, fly-around, landing, adhesion and increased rendezvous, the precise position and velocity information relative to the target objects are required, and the autonomous navigation and control method can perform better than ground measure in these DSE mission [6,7,8].
The traditional autonomous navigation methods mostly depend on angle measurement or ranging information to obtain the real-time estimation state of probe currently [9]. However, it is difficult to obtain the long-term real-time and continuous navigation information because of the limitation of the target object condition [10,11,12]. The astronomical optical information contains a high amount data of spectral characteristics and frequency shift, and the velocity of the probe can be resolved by these information [13]. Once the space and natural resources can be utilized, such as the frequency shift of the characteristic spectral lines in the visible spectral band of stars, the velocity information of spacecraft can be obtained. It will be greatly advantageous to realize the high precision estimation of instantaneous velocity in DSE, and the autonomous navigation accuracy of DSE can be improved further as a result [14,15,16,17].
In this paper, a practical guide is proposed to develop and realize an autonomous celestial navigation based on the spectrum velocity measurement technology in DSE, which can improve the velocity estimation accuracy of angle navigation and inhibit the divergence of position estimation of velocity navigation as well.
The remaining parts of the paper are organized as follows: The principle of integrated navigation is presented in Section 2, followed by the integrated navigation system model in Section 3. Section 4 presents the filtering algorithm. The observability analysis and the design of doppler navigator and hardware in-the-loop simulation system are given in Section 5 and Section 6, respectively. A comparison simulation example of navigation performance between the traditional angle navigation and the integrated navigation based on velocity measurement by stellar spectra shift is performed in Section 7. Finally, conclusions are summarized in Section 8.
4. Filtering Algorithm
Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF) is suitable for the nonlinear system [25]. The unscented transformation (UT) is the core of the UKF filtering algorithm [26]. The UT method selects a set of sample points nearby , and the mean and the covariance of these sample points respectively are and . Assuming the state variables are , the sample points and their weights are
where
where , , .
The standard UKF algorithm can be described as follows.
(1) Initialization:
(2) Computation sample points:
(3) Time update:
(4) Measurement update:
where and is respectively refer to the system and measurement noise covariance matrix.
7. Simulation and Analysis
Based on the cruise phase of the Mars exploration mission, the integrated navigation method proposed in this paper was analyzed by hardware in-the-loop simulation. The state parameters of real orbit produced by simulation software and the initial parameters of the Mars probe in the heliocentric ecliptic inertial coordinate system are shown in Table 1.
Table 1.
The basic orbit parameters.
7.1. Observability Analysis
According to the observability theory in Section 5, observable results of different navigation methods are shown in Table 2. The observable degree of angle navigation was worse than integrated navigation, which means the navigation performance of integrated navigation was better than angle navigation.
Table 2.
Observability analysis results. LOS: Line of Sight; RRV: Relative Radial Velocity.
7.2. Accuracy Analysis of Intergrated Navigation
The parameters of the UKF algorithm are shown in Table 3. The influences of the gravitational perturbations of the Sun, Mars and Earth, and the sunlight pressure perturbation were considered in the simulation dynamical model. The planetary information was derived from DE421. The Hipparcos and Tycho star catalogues were adopted to obtain data of the stars, and the catalogue numbers of the two stars in the catalogues are 45348 and 172167.
Table 3.
Simulation parameters.
The angle navigation simulation results are shown as Figure 7 and Figure 8. The simulation results showed that the accuracy of position estimation was 254.8198 km (3σ), and the accuracy of velocity estimation was 4.3201 m/s (3σ). The integrated navigation simulation results are shown as Figure 9 and Figure 10. The accuracy of position estimation was 114.5353 km (3σ), and the accuracy of velocity estimation was 1.3133 m/s (3σ).
Figure 7.
Position estimate results of angle navigation. (a) Angle navigation estimation value of probe’s position; (b) angle navigation estimation covariance of probe’s position.
Figure 8.
Velocity estimate results of angle navigation. (a) Angle navigation estimation value of probe’s velocity; (b) angle navigation estimation covariance of probe’s velocity.

Figure 9.
Position estimate results of integrated navigation. (a) Integrated navigation estimation value of probe’s position; (b) integrated navigation estimation covariance of probe’s position.
Figure 10.
Velocity estimate results of integrated navigation. (a) Integrated navigation estimation value of probe’s velocity; (b) integrated navigation estimation covariance of probe’s velocity.
The performance of integrated navigation was better than angle navigation as the introduction of velocity measurement, and the accuracy of velocity was evidently improved. This accorded with the results of observability analysis.
8. Conclusions
In this paper, an integrated navigation method based on stellar spectra shift velocity measurement is proposed. The observability of integrated navigation is better than traditional angle navigation. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method has a better performance than traditional celestial angle navigation. This research is a practical guide to the development and realization of the autonomous integrated celestial navigation based on spectrum velocity measurement technology in DSE. Furthermore, the integrated navigation system can combine other navigation methods according to different stages of deep space exploration, such as combining radio navigation, X-ray pulsar navigation during interstellar cruise, or autonomous navigation based on sequential images in the landing stage.
Author Contributions
Conceptualization: Z.S. and W.Z.; methodology: X.C., Z.S. and W.Z.; validation: X.C.; formal analysis: X.C.; data curation: J.X.; writing—original draft preparation: X.C. and J.X.; writing—review and editing: X.C. and J.X.; project administration, Z.S. and W.Z.
Funding
This work was supported by Scientific Research Program of the Shanghai Science and Technology Committee, through the Shanghai Key Laboratory of Deep Space Exploration Technology project (18DZ2272300).
Conflicts of Interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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