Attitude awareness of on-orbit space object based on analysis of time-series spectral signals

Abstract

In order to estimate the attitude parameters of space objects under the condition of space-based long-distance observation, a hierarchical solving method based on the time-series spectral signal is proposed to estimate the parameters of surface reflection characteristics and the attitude of the space objects. The first step is to let the space object in three-axis stabilization state be equivalent to a two-facet model. Then multi-level fusion model of bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) is introduced to describe the spectral reflection characteristics of complex material surfaces. Based on the time-series spectral signal and its model, the product of area and spectral BRDF of the two-facet can be reconstructed. The second step is to set up the two-facet characteristic difference model to select the optimum wavelength based on the maximum of the difference thereby minimizing the influence of coupling characteristics on of the two-facet on attitude estimate. The third step is to construct the time-series spectral signal model under the change of object attitude. The objective function is defined as the error between the model data and the measured data, then the attitude parameter can be estimated using Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm. The simulation result shows that the method is more suitable for the object with cube body, and the error between inversion value and real value will increase as the phase angle and the detector noise increase. When signal-to-noise ratio is greater than or equal to 10, the inversion error is within 2%.