In-orbit estimation of time-varying residual magnetic moment

A method for in-orbit estimation of time-varying residual magnetic moment (RMM) is presented. By use of a simple approach, the covariance of the Kalman filter is adapted to get better tracking in case of unexpected abrupt changes in the RMM without sacrificing estimation accuracy. The proposed method does not need a priori information about the magnitude of the change and assures both accurate estimation and good tracking performance for changes with different magnitudes.