Study of the Two-Line Element Accuracy by 1U CubeSat with a GPS Receiver.

There is a common practice to calculate orbital trajectories of space objects like satellites and space debris using Two-Line Element Sets (TLEs). However, TLEs provide rather coarse parameters for fine orbit computation and their precision varies with age of their issue and position of the satellite. The paper evaluates such induced position determination error using the comparison of a position calculated from TLE data for a small CubeSat class satellite and a position obtained from the on-board custom GPS receiver that is a part of such satellite payload.