A program for satellite-orbit determination - An application to the case of earth-observation satellites

A method for determining the orbit of a satellite is developed using Kalman filtering and Rauch smoothing algorithms. An adaptation of these algorithms allows a posteriori estimations to be calculated for the evolution and measurement noises, as well as for their standard deviations. By analyzing these noise estimations, the standard deviations of the a priori levels of noise can be regulated and used to detect errors in the model. Such a use is presented for earth observation satellites, first utilizing simulated data and then real data from the TIROS N satellite. It is found that the results of this method for calculating the orbit of the TIROS N satellite agree well with ONERA data for this satellite.