Orbit Design and Optimization for Point Target Revisit in LEO-LEO Occultation

Abstract

To realize atmospheric monitoring missions for carbon neutrality, this paper proposes an low earth orbit (LEO)-LEO occultation orbit design and optimization method for the user-specified point target revisit problem. First, by using the linear J2-perturbed model, a fast numerical calculation method for occultation events was proposed. Then, the revisit conditions of occultation events for a specified point target were expressed as equality and inequality constraints. For different numbers of transmitting and receiving satellites, by analyzing the numbers of the revisit constraints and free variables, the maximum numbers of user-specified revisit point targets were obtained. Finally, the maximum total observation duration for all specified point targets was optimized by the genetic algorithm. The numerical results show that the proposed method is accurate for the user-specified point target revisit, and the maximum revisit error is 0.2° in 10 days.