Orbit Determination and Differential-drag Control of Planet Labs Cubesat Constellations

TL;DR

This paper introduces scalable orbit determination methods for Planet Labs' nanosatellites and demonstrates differential-drag control techniques to manage their relative positions within satellite constellations.

Contribution

It provides a novel scalable orbit determination approach using two-way ranging and presents practical results on differential-drag control for satellite formations.

Findings

Effective orbit prediction for large satellite fleets

Successful demonstration of differential-drag control in practice

Improved accuracy in satellite relative positioning

Abstract

We present methodology and mission results from orbit determination of Planet Labs nanosatellites and differential-drag control of their relative motion. Orbit determination (OD) is required on Planet Labs satellites to accurately predict the positioning of satellites during downlink passes and we present a scalable OD solution for large fleets of small satellites utilizing two-way ranging. In the second part of this paper, we present mission results from relative motion differential-drag control of a constellation of satellites deployed in the same orbit.