Improvement of the orbit of the Spektr-R spacecraft in the RadioAstron mission on the basis of radio range and Doppler measurements

Abstract

The first results of the improvement of the state vector of the Spektr-R spacecraft of the RadioAstron mission, which is a part of an earth–space radio interferometer, are presented. The state vector includes three components for the spacecraft position and three components for its velocity in the Geocentric Celestial Reference System. Kalman filtering on the basis of radio range and Doppler data allows refinement of the components at each iteration. It is shown that orbit improvement increases the accuracy of the orbit determined at the Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics.