Abstract: A standard autonomous astronomical navigation method is based on the information of the earth sensor and the star sensor. The extended Kalman filter (EKF) is implemented to estimate the position vector of the spacecraft according to the spacecraft dynamics model and the measurements from these sensors. In order to decrease the estimation error of the filter during orbit maneuvers of the spacecraft, an adaptive robust extended Kalman filter (AREKF) is designed for spacecraft autonomous navigation. The simulation results show that the AREKF can effectively depress the unfavorable effect of thrust uncertainties, and the navigation performance is improved effectively without additional sensors. The estimate of the AREKF is more accurate than ones of the EKF and the adaptive extended Kalman filter (AEKF).

Key words: spacecraft, orbit maneuver, autonomous navigation, robust filter, adaptive filter