Recently, the increase of geo-stationary satellites in orbit makes it desirable to develop a more simplifed satellite control system which does not need a large scale computer, and yet reduces man-power.
Such a system may be realized by making an orbit computation program compact enough to be able to run on a machine like a mini-computer.
In this paper, a simplifed method for computing geo-stationary satellite orbit which meets the above requirements, is discussed. This method uses the analogy and the extension of the general perturbation method-Namely, it describes the osculating orbital elements by the series expansion of time variable t and trigonometry whose arguments are products of
Wi's and the time
t's which is measured from some fixed epoch. Here,
Wi's are frequencies that are linear combinations of the earth's angular rate of rotation, the lunar mean motion, the solar mean motion, etc.
It is shown that geo-stationary orbit can be computed by the proposed method with sufficient accuracy to control the satellites. And the effectiveness of the orbit determination program based on this method is proved by the results of orbit determination experiments of CS (Medium Capacity Communications Satellite for Experimental Purposes). The size of the program is reduced to one-tenth of the conventional one using the special perturbation method, and the program can be operated on a mini-computer.
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