What's New for ODTK 7.8

This topic lists the new features and main enhancements for ODTK 7.8. For additional improvements and corrected issues, click here. You can also read important announcements for this release and about current known issues.

ODTK general enhancements

Optical navigation using landmarks

ODTK now provides the capability to simulate and process optical navigation measurements of fixed landmarks on the surface of planetary bodies. You supply available landmarks via an ASCII file in comma-separated format. Use a functional attribute on the ODTK simulator to support data simulation, where you can choose to have ODTK automatically select landmarks based on elevation angle or you can provide a schedule. The OPNAV tracking data format has been extended to support the specification of landmark IDs.

Segmented trajectories for suface vehicles

The trajectory model for surface vehicles has been enhanced to support nominal changes in speed and direction as well as stationary intervals. This should improve the ability to model trajectories for rovers, which tend to remain still for significant periods of time while performing science investigations.

Support for RINEX 4.0 observation files

ODTK reading and writing of RINEX observation files now supports RINEX 3.03, 3.04, 3.05, and 4.0 files. ODTK supports only a subset of RINEX 3 and RINEX 4 tracking types as measurements. ODTK does not support the Indian NacIC/IRNSS GNSS system. ODTK only partially supports the Chinese BeiDou and Russian GLONASS GNSS systems. Furthermore, ODTK does not support the use of EVENT records to update MARKER NUMBER and other header information. ODTK will simply ignore the information contained in EVENT records.

Body-fixed option for empirical process noise

The empirical process noise model in ODTK has been extended to enable you to specify dynamical uncertainty in the satellite body frame. Empirical process noise provides a means to increase covariance growth to accommodate the effects of unknown forces acting on the satellite. The option to use body-frame coordinates to specify this uncertainty is convenient in situations where the unknown force is suspected to come from outgassing in a specific location on the body of the satellite or from frequent firings of attitude thrusters.

More reference frame options for child satellite deployment

You can now use an inertial frame or the Gaussian (RIC) frame, in addition to the previously available parent body frame, when specifying the direction of child satellite deployments. These additional options are intended for use during preflight mission planning where the attitude profile of the parent satellite is not known.

Additional measurement processing

Delta Range

ODTK now can simulate and process ground-based delta-range measurements. The delta-range measurements reference a common epoch at the start of each tracking pass.