RAPID INITIAL ORBIT DETERMINATION
OVERVIEW:
As the economic value of space assets in GEO increases, it is critically important to ensure flight safety by rapidly determining the orbits of newly detected debris objects. While passive optical sensors routinely provide angles-only data to the Space Surveillance Network, augmenting current systems with range and range-rate information is one way to speed up the initial orbit determination process.
Additional Context to Problem Statement:
Statistical algorithms are sought which produce joint estimates of satellite states from mixed angles, range, and range-rate information. It is desired that the method not approximate non-linear, gravitational dynamics yet remains computationally tractable for implementation on an industrial-class workstation. The method would be implemented using measurements from a heterogeneous sensor network.
As an example, a wide field-of-view telescope could be scanning a region of GEO and detect an uncatalogued debris object. Using the topocentric angles, a co-located LiDAR system could be cued to measure the objects range, range-rate, or both. The proposed method should be capable of utilizing the combination of measurements to rapidly determine the orbit of the debris object.
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