An Accuracy Analysis of the SGP4/SDP4 Model

Based on the latest release of the SGP4/SDP4 (Simplified General Perturbation Version 4/ Simplified Deep-space Perturbation Version 4) model, in this paper we have designed an orbit determination program. Through calculations for the 1120 objects with various types and orbital elements selected from the space objects database, we have obtained the accuracies of the orbit determination prediction dealt with various types of space objects by the SGP4/SDP4 model. The results show that the accuracies of the near-earth objects are in the order of magnitude of 100 meters; the averages of the orbit determination accuracies of the semi-synchronous and geosynchronous orbits are, respectively, 0.7 and 1.9 km. The orbit determination accuracies of the elliptical orbit objects are related to their eccentricities. Except for few elliptical orbit objects with e > 0.8, the orbit determination errors of the vast majority of the elliptical orbit objects are all less than 10 km. By using the SGP4/SDP4 model to make 3 days predictions for near-earth objects, 30 days for semi-synchronous orbit objects, 15 days for geosynchronous orbit objects and 1 day for elliptical orbit objects, the errors of prediction generally don’t exceed 40 km.