Efficient Satellite Orbit Approximation

In order to speed up satellite position and velocity computation, the ephemeris orbit model is approximated by simple curves. Piecewise polynomial interpolation is shown to be appropriate for the purpose, and especially splines and Hermite polynomials of different degrees and sampling intervals are compared. Cubic Hermite interpolation, along with its other beneficial properties, attains more than tenfold efficiency compared to ephemeris evaluation.

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