3 Ballistic (Coast) Flight
After the thrust cut-off or burnout and leaving the atmosphere a BT enters the free-flight portion of its trajectory — no
thrust is applied and no drag is experienced. The motion may be considered governed by the gravity alone — other factors
(e.g., perturbations) are neglected. By (2) the total acceleration is
a
=
a
G
and thus obtaininga coast model of the BT amounts
to selection of an appropriate gravity model.
3.1 Gravity Models
Flat Earth Model. The simplest possible model of gravity assumes a flat, nonrotating Earth. In this model, the gravity
acting on the target in the ENU-CS is
a
G
=
g
0
=[0
;
0
;
g
]
0
, where
g
is the constant gravitational acceleration of the Earth.
The boost and reentry portions of a BT trajectory are relatively short in range compared to the Earth radius and take place
in a close vicinity of the Earth. Thus a model of flat, non-rotating Earth may be adequate, particularly in view of the presence
of other more dominating uncertainties. On the contrary, the coast flight comprises much greater ranges usually and thus
accounting for the Earth sphericity (and even ellipticity) and rotation is essential.
Spherical Earth Model. Assume that the Earth and the BTs can be represented as point masses at their geocenters
5
and
that the gravitational forces of the moon (and other stars) can be neglected. Since the target has a negligible mass relative to
the Earth’s mass, the gravitational acceleration
a
G
is the solution of a so-called restricted two-body problem, obtained by the
Newton’s inverse-square gravity law [4] as
a
G
(
p
)=
p
2
u
p
=
p
3
p
(4)
where
p
is the vector from the Earth center to the target,
p
,
k
p
k
is its length,
u
p
,
p
=p
is the unit vector in the direction of
p
, and
is the Earth’s gravitational constant
6
.
This inverse-square gravitational acceleration model (4) is classical and has been commonly used in a variety of BT
tracking applications [12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 9]. It is attractive for its simplicity. It has been proven satisfactory for
tracking of BTs over a short range and/or period, for example, as a model of the gravitational acceleration as an integral
part of the total acceleration within a boost (boost-to-coast) motion model [15, 16, 19, 9] or for track initiation purposes
[17]. However, its underlying assumptions are rather idealistic, especially the one that the Earth can be treated as a point
mass. This may make it inadequate for other BT tracking applications, in particular, precision tracking of coast targets over
a long time period or at a low data rate, such as the ballistic flight portion of a long-range missile or a satellite. Clearly,
these simplifying assumptions becomes less accurate when the targets being tracked travel over a larger geographical region
and a longer time period. Also, during the exo-atmospheric ballistic flight, gravity is either the only practical or at least the
dominating acceleration acting on the targets and thus needs to be modeled more accurately. That is why the employment of
more precise gravity models have been proposed.
Ellipsoidal Earth Model. More accurate expressions for the gravitational acceleration can be obtained by replacing the
above spherical Earth model with an ellipsoidal (or more precisely, spheroidal) Earth model. Such a more precise approx-
imation — accounting for the Earth oblateness by including the second-order gravitational harmonic term
J
2
of the Earth’s
gravitational field model — is [4, 11]
a
G
(
p
)=
p
2
(
u
p
+
3
2
J
2
r
e
p
2
h
1
5
u
0
p
u
z
2
u
p
+2
u
0
p
u
z
u
z
i
)
(5)
where
r
e
is the Earth’s equatorial radius,
J
2
is a correction constant, and
u
z
is the unit vector along
!
Oz
I
(see Fig. 1).
J
2
, the
best known Jeffery constant, represents the difference between the polar and equatorial moment of inertia. It quantifies the
oblateness of the Earth because it is approximately equal to one third of the ellipticity of the Earth, hence also known as the
oblateness term. This model is usually considered sufficiently accurate for most BT tracking applications [11], at a cost of
considerable nonlinearity.
5
This holds if the Earth and the targets are spherically symmetric with an even distribution of their masses.
6
For the values of well-known constants used in this survey, the reader is referred to [4].
Proc. SPIE Vol. 4473
562
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