Application of the Kalman Filter to Estimate the State of an Aerobraking Maneuver

This paper presents a study about the application of a Kalman filter to estimate the position and velocity of a spacecraft in an aerobraking maneuver around the Earth. The cis-lunar aerobraking of the Hiten spacecraft as well as an aerobraking in a LEO orbit are simulated in this paper. The simulator developed considers a reference trajectory and a trajectory perturbed by external disturbances combined with nonidealities of sensors and actuators. It is able to operate in closed loop controlling the trajectory at each instant of time using a PID controller and propulsive jets. A Kalman filter utilizes the sensor data to estimate the state of the spacecraft. The estimation algorithms and propagation equations used in this process are presented. The U.S. Standard Atmosphere is adopted as the atmospheric model. The main results are compared with the case where the Kalman filter is not used. Therefore, it was possible to perform an analysis of the Kalman filter importance applied to an aerobraking maneuver.