Development of Planetary Ephemeris Generation Program for Satellite

The satellites in orbit use a sun reference vector from solar model based the ephemeris. To get the ephemeris, we use DE-Series, an ephemeris developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), or the reference vector generation formula proposed by Vallado. The DE-Series provides the numerical coefficients of Chebyshev polynomials, which have the advantage of high precision, but there is a computational burden on the satellite. The Vallado's method has low accuracy, although the sun vector can be easily obtained through the sun vector generation equation. In this paper, we have developed a program to provide the Chebyshev polynomial coefficients to obtain the sun position coordinates in the inertial coordinate system. The proposed method can improve the accuracy compared to the conventional method and can be used for high - performance, high - precision nano satellite missions.