A novel autonomous navigation constellation in the Earth–Moon system

Abstract

With more and more activities in cislunar space and deep space, a navigation system that can provide autonomous navigation service for cislunar or even deep space missions has become an urgent need. This article proposes a new type of navigation constellation which is placed on two kinds of special orbits, namely the dynamical substitutes around the triangular libration points and the distant retrograde orbits (DROs). Both types of orbits have the same characteristics of long-term stability under the full force model, so no orbit control is needed and it can operate autonomously without ground support. First, using inter-satellite range data, the autonomous orbit determination between navigation satellites on the dynamical substitutes and the DROs is investigated under the full force model. Then, taking a translunar orbit as an example, the constellation’s navigation performance based on inter-satellite range observation is evaluated. With range errors of 1, 10, and 100 m, respectively, the navigation capability of the constellation is successfully verified in the sense that the accuracy of the determined orbit reaches the level of the observation data. From the viewpoint of stable autonomous navigation, the current results are meaningful and deserve further consideration when deploying the navigation constellation in the Earth–Moon system.