Orbit and attitude state recoveries from Landmark data

The navigation of earth-referenced satellites with imaging data rather than, or in addition to, conventional radio tracking and attitude sensor telemetry is gaining increased popularity. Driving forces include a trend towards spacecraft autonomy, a need for timely and highly accurate gridding information, and a growing awareness of the presence of high quality navigation information contained in such data. This paper describes the techniques used and the results obtained in an experiment to determine the orbit and attitude state of the geosynchronous SMS-1 spacecraft from Landmark observations extracted from earth images generated by the on-board Visible and Infrared Spin-Scan Radiometer (VISSR).