Precise Orbit Determination of the ZY3-03 Satellite Using the Yaw-Attitude Modeling for Drift Angle Compensation

The ZY3-03 satellite exhibits a special yaw-steering state to compensate for the drift angle of onboard space cameras with the time-delay-and-integration charge-coupled devices (TDICCDs). The commonly used zero-attitude model, which assumes zero yaw, pitch, and roll angles, is no longer suitable. A targeted yaw-attitude model is proposed to express this special yaw state. It still defaults zero pitch and roll angles, but calculates the drift angle based on the orbit of the satellite first, and then adopts the opposite of the drift angle as the yaw angle. The orbit determination experiments have revealed that the zero-yaw assumption in the zero-attitude model would result in periodic orbit errors of up to ±86 mm in the normal direction, while the proposed model can describe yaw angle variations accurately with errors of less than ±0.01° in most epochs, and thus avoid the significant normal orbit errors. The proposed yaw-attitude model contributes to the higher precision orbit determination of ZY3-03. Furthermore, this yaw-attitude model also holds practical value for achieving higher precision orbit determination of other remote sensing satellites similar to ZY3-03, especially when the measured attitude data are not available.