Non-cooperative maneuvering spacecraft tracking via a variable structure estimator

A spacecraft performing unknown maneuvers significantly increases the probability of a collision between spacecraft with neighboring orbits. Traditional orbit determination filters cannot robustly cope with unknown maneuvers. To track non-cooperative, unknowingly maneuvering spacecraft, a novel variable structure estimator is proposed based on the input compensation to a normal filter. We develop an observer to estimate the unknown maneuver and then analyze the estimated maneuver performance based on error propagation. Once the maneuver detector declares the occurrence of an unknown maneuver, the estimated maneuver is fed to an extended Kalman filter as compensation, which enables the estimator to work adaptively. Finally, a series of numerical simulations are carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed variable structure estimator, and the estimation performances in the cases of constant and time-varying maneuvers are analyzed based on the simulation results.