International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 30-November 02, 1995 / Riviera Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada / The Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE) satellite was designed to operate with the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS) and Deep Space Network (DSN). NASA, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Center for EUV Astrophysics have been evaluating a commercially available ground station already used for NASA's Low Earth Orbit (LEO) weather satellites. This ground station will be used in a network of unattended, autonomous ground stations for telemetry reception, processing, and routing of data over a commercial, secure data line. Plans call for EUVE to be the initial network user. This network will be designed to support many TDRSS/DSN compatible missions. It will open an era of commercial, low-cost, autonomous ground station networks. The network will be capable of supporting current and future NASA scientific missions, and NASA's LEO and geostationary weather satellites. Additionally, it could support future, commercial communication satellites in low, and possibly medium, Earth orbit. The combination of an autonomous ground station and an autonomous telemetry monitoring system will allow reduction in personnel. The EUVE Science Operations Center has already reduced console work from three shifts to one by use of autonomous telemetry monitoring software.

Recent advances in spaceborne GPS technology have shown significant advantages in many aspects over conventional technologies. For instance, spaceborne GPS can realize autonomous orbit determination with significant savings in spacecraft life cycle, in power, and in mass. At present, the onboard orbit determination in real time or near-real time can typically achieve 3D orbital accuracy of metres to tens metres with Kalman filtering process, but 21st century space engineering requires onboard orbit accuracy of better than 5 metres, and even sub-metre for some space applications. The research focuses on the development of GPS-based autonomous orbit determination techniques for spacecraft. Contributions are made to the field of GPS-based orbit determination in the following five areas: Techniques to simplify the orbital dynamical models for onboard processing have been developed in order to reduce the computional burden while retaining full model accuracy. The Earth gravity acceleration approximation method was established to replace the traditional recursive acceleration computations. Results have demonstrated that with the computation burden for a 55× spherical harmonic gravity model, we achieve the accuracy of a 7070× model. Efforts were made for the simplification of solar & lunar ephemerides, atmosphere density model and orbit integration. All these techniques together enable a more accurate orbit integrator to operate onboard. Efficient algorithms for onboard GPS measurement outlier detection and measurement improvement have been developed. In addition, a closed-form single point position method was implemented to provide an initial orbit solution without any a priori information. The third important contribution was made to the development of sliding-window short-arc orbit filtering techniques for onboard processing. With respect to the existing Kalman recursive filtering, the short-arc method is more stable because more measurements are used. On the other hand, the short-arc method requires less accurate orbit dynamical model information compared to the long-arc method, thus it is suitable for onboard processing. Our results have demonstrated that by using the 1 ~ 2 revolutions of LEO code GPS data we can achieve an orbit accuracy of 1 ~ 2 metres. Sliding-window techniques provide sub-metre level orbit determination solutions with 5~20 minutes delay. A software platform for the GPS orbit determination studies has been established. Methods of orbit determination in near-real time have been developed and tested. The software system includes orbit dynamical modelling, GPS data processing, orbit filtering and result analysis modules, providing an effective technical basis for further studies. Furthermore a ground-based near-real time orbit determination system has been established for FedSat, Australia's first satellite in 30 years. The system generates 10-metre level orbit solution with half-day latency on an operational basis. This system has supported the scientific missions of FedSat such as Ka-band tracking and GPS atmosphere studies within the Cooperative Research Centre for Satellite System (CRCSS) community. Though it is different from the onboard orbit determination, it provides important test-bed for the techniques described in previous section. This thesis focuses on the onboard orbit determination techniques that were discussed in Chapter 2 through Chapter 6. The proposed onboard orbit determination algorithms were successfully validated using real onboard GPS data collected from Topex/Poseidon, CHAMP and SAC-C satellites.

Network connectivity is a fundamental property affecting network performance. Given the reliability of each link, network connectivity determines the probability that a message can be delivered from the source to the destination. In this thesis, we study the directed network connectivity where the message will be forwarded toward the destination hop by hop, so long as the neighbor(s) is (are) closer to the destination. Directed connectivity, closely related to directed percolation, is very complicated to calculate. The existing state-of-the-art can only calculate directed connectivity for a lattice network up-to-the size of 10 × 10. In this thesis, we devise a new approach that is simpler and more scalable and can handle general network topology and heterogeneous links. The proposed approach uses an unambiguous hop count to divide the networks into hops and gives two steps of pre-process to transform hop-count ambiguous networks into unambiguous ones, and derive the end-to-end connectivity. Then, using the Markov property to obtain the state transition probability hop by hop. Second, with tens of thousands of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites covering the Earth, LEO satellite networks can provide coverage and services that are otherwise not possible using terrestrial communication systems. The regular and dense LEO satellite constellation also provides new opportunities and challenges for network protocol design. In this thesis, we apply the directed connectivity analytical model on LEO satellite backbone networks to ensure ultra-reliable and low-latency (URLL) services using LEO networks, and propose a directed percolation routing (DPR) algorithm to lower the cost of transmission without sacrificing speed. Using Starlink constellation (with 1,584 satellites) as an example, the proposed DPR can achieve a few to tens of milliseconds latency reduction for inter-continental transmissions compared to the Internet backbone, while maintaining high reliability without link-layer retransmissions. Finally, considering the link redundancy overhead and delay/reliability tradeoff, DPR can control the size of percolation. In other words, we can choose a part of links to be active links considering the reliability and cost tradeoff. / Graduate

Thesis (MEng)--Stellenbosch University, 2013. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Throughout its lifetime in space, a spacecraft is exposed to risk of collision with orbital debris or operational satellites. This risk is especially high within the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) region where the highest density of space debris is accumulated. This study investigates orbital decay of some LEO micro-satellites and accelerating orbit decay by using a deorbitsail. The Semi-Analytical Liu Theory (SALT) and the Satellite Toolkit was employed to determine the mean elements and expressions for the time rates of change. Test cases of observed decayed satellites (Iridium-85 and Starshine-1) are used to evaluate the predicted theory. Results for the test cases indicated that the theory tted observational data well within acceptable limits. Orbit decay progress of the SUNSAT micro-satellite was analysed using relevant orbital parameters derived from historic Two Line Element (TLE) sets and comparing with decay and lifetime prediction models. The study also explored the deorbit date and time for a 1U CubeSat (ZACUBE-01). A proposed orbital debris solution or technology known as deorbitsail was also investigated to gain insight in sail technology to reduce the orbit life of spacecraft with regards to de- orbiting using aerodynamic drag. The deorbitsail technique signi cantly increases the e ective cross-sectional area of a satellite, subsequently increasing atmospheric drag and accelerating orbit decay. The concept proposed in this work introduces a very useful technique of orbit decay as well as deorbiting of spacecraft. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Gedurende sy leeftyd in die ruimte word 'n ruimtetuig blootgestel aan die risiko van 'n botsing met ruimterommel of met funksionele satelliete. Hierdie risiko is veral hoog in die lae-aardbaan gebied waar die hoogste digtheid ruimterommel voorkom. Hierdie studie ondersoek die wentelbaanverval van sommige Lae-aardbaan mikrosatelliete asook die versnelde baanverval wanneer van 'n deorbitaal meganisme gebruik gemaak word. Die Semi-Analitiese Liu Teorie en die Satellite Toolkit sagtewarepakket is gebruik om die gemiddelde baan-elemente en uitdrukkings vir hul tyd-afhanlike tempo van verandering te bepaal. Toetsgevalle van waargenome vervalde satelliete (Iridium-85 en Starshine-1) is gebruik om die verloop van die voorspelde teoretiese verval te evalueer. Resultate vir die toetsgevalle toon dat die teorie binne aanvaarbare perke met die waarnemings ooreenstem. Die verloop van die SUNSAT mikrosatelliet se wentelbaanverval is ook ontleed deur gebruik te maak van historiese Tweelyn Elemente datastelle en dit te vergelyk met voorspelde baan- elemente. Die studie het ook ondersoek ingestel na die voorspelde baan-verbyval van 'n 1-eenheid cubesat (ZACUBE-01). Die impak op wentelbaanverval deur 'n voorgestelde oplossing vir die beperking van ruimterommel, 'n deorbitaalseil, is ook ondersoek. So seil verkort 'n satelliet se ruimte- leeftyd deur sy e ektiewe deursnee-area te vergroot en dan van verhoogde atmosferiese sleur en sonstralingsdruk gebruik te maak om die vervalproses te versnel. Hierdie voorgestelde konsep is 'n moontlike nuttige tegniek vir versnelde baanverval en beheerde deorbitalering van ruimtetuie om ruimterommel te verminder.