Dynamical Cartography for Cislunar Catalog Maintenance and Characterization
Abstract
While the capability of the U.S. to maintain space domain awareness (SDA) in the confines of the traditional orbits out to the geosynchronous belt is mature, the extreme range, difficult observing geometries, and unstable astrodynamics create particular challenges associated with conducting SDA in the cislunar environment. The ability to quantify, assess, and predict the behavior of objects in space is foundational to Space Situational Awareness (SSA) and SDA, and the trustworthy detection and characterization of orbital events is essential to the assessment of potential threats to our Nation’s assets in space. These remain pressing problems in the classical circumterrestrial regime, but present unique and diverse difficulties for the vast cislunar domain. In an SSA context, for example, both the modest stationkeeping for orbit maintenance in libration point trajectories, as demonstrated by the NASA ARTEMIS spacecrafts, and the intrinsic sensitivity of these trajectories on account of spacemanifold dynamics can serve to complicate attempts to maintain custody of an object in this unstable orbital environment. It is precisely these distinctive dynamical features, including rapid uncertainty propagation, that frustrate SSA but enable novel spacemission concepts that are not simply predicated by Keplerian motion. This basic research effort proposes using a novel methodology, grounded in astronomical heritage, to develop a unique dynamical cartography and orbit fingerprint for classifying cislunar space objects (CSOs) and improving both maneuver-anomaly detection and orbitprediction capabilities in the complex cislunar environment. This research has two main components- (1) we will provide a dynamical atlas of the entire cislunar coneof shame region (i.e., lunar exclusion zone), leveraging this for surveillance design strategies? and (2) work out the theory of proper elements for CSO dynamical taxonomy and maneuver detection.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Mar 07, 2023
- Source ID
- FA95502110191
Entities
People
- Aaron Rosengren
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- United States Air Force
- University of California, San Diego