Development of an Orbital Trajectory Analysis Tool

Since Thailand successfully launched the first earth observation satellite (Thaichote) in 2008, the Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency (GISTDA) has started developing an orbit analysis tool called “EMERALD†to be used for the current and future mission planned by GISTDA. In this paper, we present the development of a satellite orbit control maneuver, which is one of the analysis tools, by providing essential parameters for an orbital trajectory analysis and design. The algorithms are developed and programmed in a convenient graphical user interface (GUI). The results can guarantee a mission and design a desired orbital mission by calculating suitable maneuver parameters to correct the ground track (GT) and local solar time (LST) under control window including the transfer orbit for the good quality of the mission data. The validation results are in good agreement with Quartz++, which is a flight dynamic software developed by EADS ASTRIUM.Since Thailand successfully launched the first earth observation satellite (Thaichote) in 2008, the Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency (GISTDA) has started developing an orbit analysis tool called “EMERALD” to be used for the current and future mission planned by GISTDA. In this paper, we present the development of a satellite orbit control maneuver, which is one of the analysis tools, by providing essential parameters for an orbital trajectory analysis and design. The algorithms are developed and programmed in a convenient graphical user interface (GUI). The results can guarantee a mission and design a desired orbital mission by calculating suitable maneuver parameters to correct the ground track (GT) and local solar time (LST) under control window including the transfer orbit for the good quality of the mission data. The validation results are in good agreement with Quartz++, which is a flight dynamics software developed by EADS ASTRIUM

Design and validation of flight dynamics system

This paper presents the architecture design of flight dynamics system (FDS) known as “EMERALD” developed by Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency (GISTDA) and Mahanakorn University of Technology (MUT). The capability of the system enables to provide the state vector of a satellite, mission analysis, orbit events and mission monitoring. The methodologies of orbit determination and event prediction modules implemented for mission management are presented and the validations of both are done by comparing with the previous FDS (Quartz) developed by EADS ASTRIUM. As a result of the implementation, the reduction of the operation time is significant and the prediction performance is high accurate and reliable when comparing with Quartz