A model for the comparison, for cost-effectiveness, of expendable, reusable and serviceable spacecraft
- Paper ID
IAF-85-425
- author
- company
European Space Agency
- country
France
- year
1985
- abstract
This paper discusses the problem of the target acquisition of an artificial satellite by a ground radio tracker. The method of selecting the target acquisition mode is given from combined consideration of the performance of the tracker, the orbit elements and their errors used for predicting the satellite ephemeris. The emphasis is placed on studying the scam patterns of the tracking antenna for reliable acquisition of the target when the dispersion region of the ephemeris prediction errors can not be covered by its single beam-width.