A NOVEL APPROACH TO SOLVE THE GREAT CIRCLE TRACK BASED ON ROTATION TRANSFORMATION

摘要

The great circle track (GCT) is composed of several rhumb lines in practice. Given the initial conditions, the waypoints along the GOT can be determined by the navigator. To reduce the complex calculation in a space system, transforming the system into a planar coordinate one is considered. Thus, an idea of the plane of the celestial meridian in celestial navigation is proposed to determine the waypoints, which are presented in equator coordinate system and horizontal one. For locating the waypoints on the GCT, the rotation transformation is introduced to derive the governing equations for the computation procedures with respect to different given initial conditions. Due to the rotation transformation, all initial conditions to obtain the waypoints can be dealt with simultaneously. A program, GCTPro_RT, is developed to solve the GCT problems for any smart devices. Its effectiveness and real applications are presented through demonstrated examples.