Influence of orbital perturbations due to non-spherical Earth shape on the Landsat multispectral imaging platform¹

Issue title: Special Section: Soft Computing and Intelligent Systems: Techniques and Applications

Guest editors: Sabu M. Thampi, El-Sayed M. El-Alfy, Sushmita Mitra and Ljiljana Trajkovic

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Shanmugha Sundaram, G.A.^{a; b; *} | Reshma, R.^b

Affiliations: [a] Department of Electronics and Communications Engineering, Amrita School of Engineering, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Amrita University, Coimbatore, India | [b] Center for Computational Engineering and Networking (CEN), Amrita School of Engineering, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Amrita University, Coimbatore, India

Correspondence: [*] Corresponding author G.A. Shanmugha Sundaram, Department of Electronics and Communications Engineering, Amrita School of Engineering, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Amrita University, Coimbatore, India. E-mail: ga_ssundaram@cb.amrita.edu.

Note: [1] SIERS Laboratory, ASE Coimbatore, Amrita University, India.

Abstract: Satellites that orbit the Earth at lower altitudes are the predominant type that are deployed in remote sensing missions. Although thee are many well documented advantages in having the Earth-observing satellites in such lower orbits, the altitude parameter often introduces significant variabilities to the orbital elements, the predominant among them being the perturbative forces due to atmospheric drag. The drag parameter causes deviation of the satellite from its actual orbital trajectory. While updated near-Earth atmospheric drag models have helped resolve this issue, there are the other forces that are secondary in importance, such as the non-spherical Earth’s shape factor effect and luni-solar perturbations that also affect on remote sensing satellites, particularly of the low-Earth Orbit (LEO) and geosynchronous transfer orbiting (GTO) types, that are considered for this particular study. After verifying the equivalent perturbed acceleration terms using the Cowell’s method, variations caused to the classical orbital elements in general, and the altitude element in particular, are characterised in terms of the corresponding distortions caused in the imaging data obtained by the Landsat platform, that are then shown as resulting in a image quality degradation.

Keywords: LEO and GTO satellites, PAN image, orbital perturbations, Keplerian elements, imaging sensors

DOI: 10.3233/JIFS-169465

Journal: Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems, vol. 34, no. 3, pp. 1723-1730, 2018