Spacecraft orbit determination through a joint processing of imaging and radio-tracking data

Autonomous navigation is a key requirement to expand the scientific return of the future space exploration missions. Novel guidance, navigation, and control systems are currently under development to support a precise reconstruction of the spacecraft trajectory through a combined processing of multi-sensor datasets. A joint analysis of ground-based radio-tracking data and image based measurements, for example, can improve the estimation of the spacecraft trajectory by providing additional constraints based on the detection and tracking of relevant surface features (e.g., craters). Numerical simulations based on a lunar orbiter are presented in this work to investigate the attainable accuracies of the proposed data-fusion orbit determination approach.