Volume 35 Issue 4
Jul.  2015
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ZHANG Cheng, WU Xia, ZHENG Jianhua, WU Ji. Orbit Design for Twin-spacecraft Space VLBI[J]. Chinese Journal of Space Science, 2015, 35(4): 502-510. doi: 10.11728/cjss2014.04.502
Citation: ZHANG Cheng, WU Xia, ZHENG Jianhua, WU Ji. Orbit Design for Twin-spacecraft Space VLBI[J]. Chinese Journal of Space Science, 2015, 35(4): 502-510. doi: 10.11728/cjss2014.04.502

Orbit Design for Twin-spacecraft Space VLBI

doi: 10.11728/cjss2014.04.502
Funds:  Supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (40701100, 40801136) and the Strategic Priority Program on Space Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDA04060803)
  • Received Date: 2014-06-02
  • Rev Recd Date: 2015-02-03
  • Publish Date: 2015-07-15
  • Space Very Long Baseline Interferometry (S-VLBI) is an aperture synthesis technique utilizing an array of radio telescopes including ground telescopes and space orbiting telescopes. It can achieve much higher spatial resolution than that from the ground-only VLBI. In this paper, a new concept of twin spacecraft S-VLBI has been proposed, which utilizes the space-space baselines formed by two satellites to obtain larger and uniform uv coverage without atmospheric influence and hence achieve high quality images with higher angular resolution. The orbit selections of the two satellites are investigated. The imaging performance and actual launch conditions are all taken into account in orbit designing of the twin spacecraft S-VLBI. Three schemes of orbit design using traditional elliptical orbits and circular orbits are presented. These design results can be used for different scientific goals. Furthermore, these designing ideas can provide useful references for the future Chinese millimeter-wave S-VLBI mission.

     

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