NASA NTRS1963
Orbit determination and prediction programs are needed to generate ephemerides for the satellite. Orbit determination is from tracking data consisting of angles only, and is based on a modified version of a method by R. E. Briggs and J. W. Slowey of the Smithsonian Institution. Trends in the data due to perturbations from a Keplerian orbit are removed before this process, and estimates of the orbital elements from individual passes are combined statistically to produce refined estimates. Ephemeris calculation is by a semi-analytic method in which deviations from a Keplerian orbit are obtained by integrating the perturbing forces. The programs to implement these procedures have been written for both the IBM 7090 and the IBM 1620 computers.