arXiv · 2607.10072
Fully Multiplicative Attitude and Orbit Determination for Deep space Navigation
Abstract
This paper develops a geometry-consistent fully multiplicative unscented Kalman filter (FM-UKF) for joint spacecraft attitude--orbit estimation with simultaneous dual star-tracker misalignment calibration. The estimator uses a 21-dimensional local error state combining attitude, angular velocity, gyroscope bias, inertial position and velocity, and two tracker-misalignment vectors on a mixed quaternion--Euclidean manifold. Gyroscope, star-tracker, and planet line-of-sight measurements are fused, with celestial aberration retained to capture velocity-dependent optical coupling. A multiplicative extended Kalman filter (MEKF) is implemented as a first-order baseline using the same nominal state, attitude retraction, and unit-vector measurement geometry. Monte Carlo results show similar short-step performance, while at coarse propagation intervals the proposed FM-UKF remains consistent and the MEKF exhibits divergence.
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Ridma Ganganath, Simone Servadio. 2026-07-11. Fully Multiplicative Attitude and Orbit Determination for Deep space Navigation. https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.10072
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