Perception of mechanical stress by individual molecules- From fundamental imaging tools to practical material health assessment
Abstract
Conjunction assessment involves deciding whether two space objects are likely to collide and is increasingly important due to the rapidly increasing numbers of commercial satellites in low earth orbit. This task is based on noisy observations and therefore is inherently statistical, yet although there is a large engineering literature on the problem, it has received almost no attention from the statistical community. Most previous work has concerned the rapid and accurate computation of the so-called collision probability, but this has a problematic interpretation and operating properties and it appears not to have been systematically compared with any potential competitors. In previous work the PI s proposed a statistical model for satellite conjunction assessment and has used this both to clarify the role and likely properties of the collision probability as a Bayesian estimator and to derive an alternative approach based on standard statistical theory. Numerical work established that the proposal has excellent operating properties within the framework of the model, but a systematic comparison with the collision probability was not attempted, nor was the method applied to a large number of real situations. The goals of the current proposal are (a) to compare the new proposal with existing approaches to conjunction assessment using a large database of conjunctions, (b) to use results from (a) to inform the choice of the operational threshold at which collision avoidance maneuvers should be considered, taking into account potential losses both from making an unnecessary maneuver and from a collision, (c) to investigate whether adaptions of the Bayesian framework for the collision probability would be appropriate, and (d) to investigate whether ideas from statistical extreme-value theory, which deals in low-probability high-impact events, can usefully be applied. If successful, the work should both validate and operationalize a novel and statistically valid approach to conjunction assessment and thus has potential for high impact in an increasingly important area. The requested resource is the salary of a named post-doctoral fellow at the University of Lausanne from 1 March 2024 for two years, plus money for travel and computing costs.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Feb 05, 2025
- Source ID
- FA86552417013
Entities
People
- Georgy Filonenko
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- Delft University of Technology
- United States Air Force