ABSTRACT
High-resolution imagery of the remote sensing satellite has a mass market in applications such as town planning, cartography, and forestry (Xu et al., 2014). We know that the resolution of Earth images is directly proportional to satellite’s altitude. Earth observation satellite can obtain higher ground resolution when orbiting at very low altitude. The altitude of a conventional remote sensing satellite is generally around from 500 km to 700 km. When a satellite is flying at a super low altitude with its altitude between 120 km and 300 km, a significant severely aerodynamic drag force and torque then will be experienced by the satellite. The altitude of the satellite decreases quickly because of the strong atmosphere drag, and aerodynamic torque is most prominent of the environmental disturbance torques, which has a dominant effect on super-lowaltitude satellite attitude motion. The benefits and challenges of super-low-altitude satellite are investigated (Noda et al., 2007; Krueger, 2010; Xu et al., 2014). The super-low-altitude satellite bridges the gap between high-altitude aerial reconnaissance platforms and conventional LEO satellites. The primary benefits of designing and operating super-low-altitude satellite include: improving ground resolution; reducing payload mass and size and launch costs. The challenges of super-low-altitude satellite encountered are strong
aerodynamic drag perturbation and uncertain environment in satellite drag associated with variations in atmospheric conditions.
