Orbital propagation using Octave/Matlab
Goals
Comparing two numerical methods of satellite trajectory calculation: SGP4 and numerical integration of the equations of motion of a "low Earth orbit" satellite using the ode78 function. For that we use the implementation of the SGP4 model that can be downloaded here: (http://celestrak.com/software/tskelso-sw.asp). The numerical integrator is under development and can be accessed from this repository. The codes use the SGP library for setting the initial parameters of integration.
Input of the integrator
Parameter file should look like this:
step day model
orbital elements
For example:
100 1 zonal
1 11416U 79057A 80003.44366214 .00000727 00000-0 33454-3 0 878
2 11416 98.7309 35.7226 0013335 92.0280 268.2428 14.22474848 27074
Stepsize = 100 seconds, integration time = 1 day. More on the two-line element set: (https://celestrak.com/columns/v04n03/)
Currently working on:
- comparing sgp4 and Runge-Kutta propagation without friction
- integrating air friction into the Runge-Kutta model