NAVIGATION OF AVHRR IMAGES USING ARGOS OR TBUS BULLETINS

An automatic AVHRR navigation method has been tested using ARGOS or TBUS orbital elements as input data. Satisfactory results have been obtained on 16 NOAA-9 and NOAA-10 orbits between 19 June 1988 and 26 September 1988: a mean error of 3.5 km and a standard deviation of this error of 1.2 km with ARGOS, a mean error of 2.3 km and a standard deviation of 0.6 km with TBUS. The positioning error consists of a pixel error which is systematic for each satellite (-1.6 pixels for NOAA-9 and 2.0 pixels for NOAA-10) and a variable line error which is mainly due to the positioning error of the satellite on its trajectory.