The impact of the yarkovsky effect on satellite navigation around small bodies

This paper establishes an auto-navigation technique where a spacecraft establishes its own states by tracking a ballistic object also with unknown position and velocity, where both are under the influence of a known gravitational field. Assuming further the existence of a swarm of m spacecraft and an accompanying swarm of n ejected objects such as those characterized by OSIRIS-Rex at Bennu, there exists an m vs. n tracking problem where each spacecraft must make decisions about which objects to track to best improve navigation performance over time. This paper documents the basic Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) approach to solving this auto-navigation problem, and then establishes a baseline technique for optimizing the track assignments over time to improve baseline performance. Finally, an exploration of disturbances such the Yarkovsky effect are examined to understand their effects on filter convergence.