Orbit determination for remote-sensing satellites using only optical imagery

The development of high-resolution remote-sensing satellites is paving a promising path towards autonomous orbit determination using optical imagery. In this article, an image-based orbit determination strategy is investigated with a focus on the effects of lighting constraints, image resolution, and pointing accuracy on orbit determination performance. The measurement model is established based on the perspective projection and its observability is demonstrated. To investigate the influence of lighting constraints, four cases of simulations considering no lighting constraints, either cloud-coverage constraint or night-time constraint, or both constraints are conducted for the WorldView-3 satellite. The obtained root-mean square RMS errors of position and velocity in the four cases remain below 10.83 m and 1.42 cm , respectively, at an image resolution of 0.3 m and a pointing accuracy of 0.0005 . By varying the values of image resolution and pointing accuracy, the effects of these two factors and their relative importance are further investigated. The final results indicate that pointing accuracy plays a dominant role in image-based orbit determination for high-resolution remote-sensing satellites.