Determination of satellite orbital elements by means of on-board GPS receiver and its verification

We optimized orbital elements to minimize the squared deviation of the satellite position intermittently measured by an on-board GPS receiver from the satellite position measured from orbital elements using the SGP orbit model, and then reentered the results into the SGP orbital model to attempt an interpolation calculation of the satellite position and velocity at any given point in time. As a result of applying this system to data from a GPS receiver on board the Whale Ecology Observation Satellite (WEOS), we found that by using positions measured at several minute intervals over a period of about 2 hours, we could calculate the position of WEOS with an error of about 50 m at any given instant within the time frame, among other conclusions. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electron Comm Jpn Pt 1, 90(8): 10–19, 2007; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/ecja.20378