Sovremennye problemy distantsionnogo zondirovaniya Zemli iz kosmosa, 2025, Vol. 22, No. 1, pp. 303-311
Increasing the accuracy of optical navigation measurements in the vicinity of the Moon and other bodies of the Solar System
V.A. Grishin
1 , E.V. Belinskaya
1 , P.S. Smetanin
1 1 Space Research Institute RAS, Moscow, Russia
Accepted: 03.12.2024
DOI: 10.21046/2070-7401-2025-22-1-303-311
The tasks of exploration of planets and other bodies of the Solar System require efficient methods of solving navigation problems in the vicinity of these objects, as well as during the flight to them. For this purpose, optical navigation systems can be in particular used, which are capable of providing high measurement accuracy (including at large distances) and have relatively small weight, dimensions, and power consumption. Such a navigation system has been developed and manufactured at the Optical and Physical Research Department of Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. A distinctive feature of this navigation system is that several optical sensors, namely star sensors, wide-angle and narrow-angle navigation cameras, are made as a single structure. This opens up the possibility of further increasing the accuracy of navigation while reducing the errors in the mutual binding of the coordinate systems of star sensors and the navigation camera. Two cases are considered in the article. Firstly, we consider the case when the plane coordinates are determined only by sighting landmarks on the Moon’s surface without using the information from star sensors. Secondly, we consider the case when not only information about the results of sighting landmarks on the surface of the Moon is used for navigation, but also information from star sensors is used. The estimates were made for a flight altitude above the lunar surface of 100 km, using low-resolution (4.2 megapixels) and high-resolution (47.5 megapixels) image sensors and three different focal lengths of the lens (3.6, 23, and 60 mm). For a low-resolution image sensor and a lens with a focal length of 23 mm, an approximate 43-fold decrease in the error in estimating the plane coordinates was obtained compared to the case when the information from star sensors is not used (the standard deviation of the estimate of plane coordinates was 7.87–8.02 m). For a high-resolution image sensor and a lens with a focal length of 60 mm, an approximate 31–40-fold reduction in the error in estimating the plane coordinates was obtained (the standard deviation of the estimate of the plane coordinates was 2.57–2.68 m).
Keywords: optical navigation, star sensors, narrow-angle and wide-angle navigation cameras, integration of measurement results, increasing navigation accuracy
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