Navigation Performance of the Libration Point Satellite Navigation System in Cislunar Space

Based on the candidate architectures of the libration point satellite navigation system proposed in our previous work, a navigation performance study is conducted in this paper to verify the cislunar navigation ability of the proposed system. Using scalar satellite-to-satellite range measurement between the user and libration point navigation satellites, a virtual lunar exploration mission scenario is developed to verify the navigation performance of the candidate Earth-Moon L-1,L-2,L-4,L-5 four-satellite constellations. The simulation results indicate that the libration point satellite navigation system is available for cislunar navigation and the navigation accuracy of a few tens of metres can be achieved for both the trans-lunar cruise and lunar orbit phase. Besides that, it is also found that the navigation accuracy of the libration point satellite navigation system is sensitive to the orbit of the L-1 satellite. Once the L-1 navigation satellite is located in the Halo orbit or vertical Lyapunov orbit, the proposed system can present a better navigation performance in cislunar space.