The use ofionic propulsion systems for North/South station keeping of geostationary satellites allows a consideravle reduction of the annual fuel budget but typically requires daily North and south manoeuvres with durations of 4-5 hours.Since 24 hours of tracding are usually required for orbit determination,it is evident that manoeuvre free arcs of only 8 hours imply notable limitations for the precise reconstruction of the spacecraft trajectory and the calibration of individual manoeuvres. this paper shows hov this problem can be overcome by the use of a highly precise trilateration tracking system,combined with an accurate modelling of the low thrust manoeuvres in the orbit determination software.The application of a table driven thrust vector variations during individual burns.Finally a simulation study is presented and used to analyze the capabilities of our advanced trilateration and orbit determination system.
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