Understand
A crucial part of a space mission for very-long baseline interferometery (VLBI), which is the technique capable of providing the highest resolution images in astronomy, is orbit determination of the mission's space radio telescope(s).
- In order to successfully detect interference fringes that result from correlation of the signals recorded by a ground-based and a space-borne radio telescope, the propagation delays experienced in the near-Earth space by radio waves emitted by the source and the relativity effects on each telescope's clock need to be evaluated, which requires accurate knowledge of position and velocity of the space radio telescope.
- In this paper we describe our approach to orbit determination (OD) of the RadioAstron spacecraft of the RadioAstron space-VLBI mission.
- Determining RadioAstron's orbit is complicated due to several factors: strong solar radiation pressure, a highly eccentric orbit, and frequent orbit perturbations caused by the attitude control system.