Generalized Polynomial Chaos Based Uncertainty Propagation for Perturbed Two-body Orbits

This paper presents a generalized polynomial chaos based computational methodology for the uncertainty propagation problem of the perturbed two-body orbits. The key idea is to approximate the solutions of the stochastic differential equation describing the perturbed orbits with linear expansions of a series of orthogonal polynomial bases. The main uncertainty sources in the dynamical equations were firstly analyzed, and then the non-intrusive generalized polynomial chaos technique was introduced to propagate the uncertainties for the consideration of estimation accuracy and computational efficiency. Numerical simulation results validate that the proposed algorithm is effective for non-Gaussian uncertainty analysis of nonlinear systems over a long duration, providing references for engineering applications.