Correlation and Initial Orbit Determination for Short-Arc Optical Observations

Abstract

Situational awareness of Earth-orbiting particles is highly important for future human activities in space. For optical observations of debris, multiple observations must be combined in order to determine the orbit of the observed object. It is generally uncertain, however, whether two arbitrary tracks are of the same object, and solving this problem can be computationally intensive. In this paper, we propose a technique of correlating multiple optical observations by means of probability distributions in Poincare orbit element space.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 01, 2010
Accession Number
ADA531732

Entities

People

  • Daniel J. Scheeres
  • Kohei Fujimoto

Organizations

  • University of Colorado Boulder

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Artificial Satellites
  • Computer Simulations
  • Coordinate Systems
  • Data Sets
  • Earth Orbits
  • Geosynchronous Orbits
  • Grids
  • Medium Earth Orbits
  • Observation
  • Orbits
  • Probability
  • Probability Distributions
  • Random Variables
  • Satellite Constellations
  • Standards
  • Two Dimensional

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Computer Vision.
  • Space Exploration and Orbital Mechanics.

Technology Areas

  • Space
  • Space - Orbital Debris
  • Space - Space Objects