The optimization of satellite orbit for Space-VLBI observation

TL;DR

This paper presents an orbit optimization scheme for Space-VLBI to enhance observation quality by improving $uv$ coverage, converting orbit design into an optimization problem and demonstrating its application in scheduling observations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel orbit optimization method for Space-VLBI that effectively improves $uv$ coverage and can be used for observation scheduling.

Findings

The scheme effectively finds optimal satellite orbits within reasonable time.

The method improves $uv$ coverage for better imaging resolution.

It can be applied to optimize observation scheduling.

Abstract

By sending one or more telescopes into space, Space-VLBI (SVLBI) is able to achieve even higher angular resolution and is therefore the trend of the VLBI technique. For SVLBI program, the design of satellite orbits plays an important role for the success of planned observation. In this paper, we present our orbit optimization scheme, so as to facilitate the design of satellite orbit for SVLBI observation. To achieve that, we characterize the $uv$ coverage with a measure index and minimize it by finding out the corresponding orbit configuration. In this way, the design of satellite orbit is converted to an optimization problem. We can prove that, with appropriate global minimization method, the best orbit configuration can be found within the reasonable time. Besides that, we demonstrate this scheme can be used for the scheduling of SVLBI observations.