An analysis of peculiarities of the satellite autonomous navigation in sighting unknown landmarks on the planet surface

An analysis of characteristics of autonomous navigation by using optical sighting of unknown landmarks was carried out for artificial satellites in circular orbits around the earth with altitudes from 300 to 900 km. It is shown that navigational errors vary approximately in inverse proportion to duration of measurements. Also they decrease with an increasing number of sighted landmarks. The errors poorly depend on the orbit altitude if the duration of measurement for each landmark is chosen in proportion to the orbit altitude, or a maximal zenith angle of sighting the landmark remains constant. Some characteristics of the navigational algorithm are given. Admissible deviations of initial orbital elements from their exact values are investigated. For a properly chosen measurement procedure the algorithm proves to be stable even for rather crudely given initial parameters.