This paper presents a satellite relative navigation strategy for formation flying, which chooses an appropriate navigation algorithm according to the operating environment. Not only global positioning system (GPS) measurements, but laser measurements can also be utilized to determine the relative positions of satellites. Laser data is used solely or together with GPS measurements. Numerical simulations were conducted to compare the relative navigation algorithm using only laser data and laser data combined with GPS data. If an accurate direction of laser pointing is estimated, the relative position of satellites can be determined using only laser measurements. If not, the combined algorithm has better performance, and is irrelevant to the precision of the relative angle data between two satellites in spherical coordinates. Within 10 km relative distance between satellites, relative navigation using double difference GPS data makes more precise relative position estimation results. If the simulation results are applied to the relative navigation strategy, the proper algorithm can be chosen, and the relative position of satellites can be estimated precisely in changing mission environments.

In a satellite gravimetry mission similar to GRACE, the precision of inter-satellite ranging is one of the key factors affecting the quality of gravity field recovery. In this paper, the impact of ranging precision on the accuracy of recovered geopotential coefficients is analyzed. Simulated precise orbit determination (POD) data and inter-satellite range data of formation-flying satellites containing white noise were generated, and geopotential coefficients were recovered from these simulated data sets using the crude acceleration approach. The accuracy of the recovered coefficients was quantitatively compared between data sets encompassing different ranging precisions. From this analysis, a rough prediction of the accuracy of geopotential coefficients could be obtained from the hypothetical mission. For a given POD precision, a ranging measurement precision that matches the POD precision was determined. Since the purpose of adopting inter-satellite ranging in a gravimetry mission is to overcome the imprecision of determining orbits, ranging measurements should be more precise than POD. For that reason, it can be concluded that this critical ranging precision matching the POD precision can serve as the minimum precision requirement for an on-board ranging device. Although the result obtained herein is about a very particular case, this methodology can also be applied in cases where different parameters are used.

This paper presents relative navigation using intermittent laser-based measurement data for spacecraft flying formation that consist of two spacecrafts; namely, chief and deputy spacecrafts. The measurement data consists of the relative distance measured by a femtosecond laser, and the relative angles between the two spacecrafts. The filtering algorithms used for the relative navigation are the extended Kalman filter (EKF), unscented Kalman filter (UKF), and least squares recursive filter (LSRF). Numerical simulations reveal that the relative navigation performances of the EKF- and UKF-based relative navigation algorithms decrease in accuracy as the measurement outage period increases. However, the relative navigation performance of the UKF-based algorithm is 95 % more accurate than that of the EKF-based algorithm when the measurement outage period is 80 sec. Although the relative navigation performance of the LSRF-based relative navigation algorithm is 94 % and 370 % less accurate than those of the EKF- and UKF-based navigation algorithms, respectively, when the measurement outage period is 5 sec; the navigation error varies within a range of 4 %, even though the measurement outage period is increased. The results of this study can be applied to the design of a relative navigation strategy using the developed algorithms with laser-based measurements for spacecraft formation flying.