Real-Time Thermospheric Density Estimation Via Radar And GPS Tracking
Data Assimilation
Abstract
As the number of man-made Earth-orbiting objects increases, satellite
operators need enhanced space traffic management capabilities to ensure
safe space operations. For objects in Low-Earth orbit, orbit
determination and prediction require accurate estimates of the local
thermospheric density. In previous work, the estimation of thermospheric
densities using two-line element data and a reduced-order model for the
upper atmosphere was demonstrated. In this paper we demonstrate an
approach for density estimation using radar and GPS tracking data. For
this, we assimilate the tracking data in a dynamic reduced-order density
model using a Kalman filter by simultaneously estimating the orbits and
global density. We used the radar range and range-rate measurements of
20 objects and the GPS position measurements of 10 commercial
satellites. The estimated density was validated against accurate SWARM
density data and compared with NRLMSISE-00, JB2008, and TLE-estimated
densities. We found that the estimated densities are significantly more
accurate than NRLMSISE-00 and JB2008 densities. In particular, using the
GPS data of 10 satellites, we obtain density estimates with a daily 1-σ
error of only 5% compared to 14% and 22% for empirical models and
10% for TLE-estimated density. These accurate density estimates can be
used to improve orbit determination and the use of real-time tracking
data would enable real-time density estimation.