Kyle Stoker, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo; James Johnson, California Polytechnic State University; Kira Abercromby, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo; Liam Smith, Lockheed Martin Space; Morgan Yost, Lockheed Martin Space; Andrew Zizzi, Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center
Keywords: Orbital Debris, Lockheed Martin, Space Situational Awareness, SSA, LEO, Small Telescope
Abstract:
Space situational awareness (SSA) has become a more complex problem to understand with the recent influx of trackable orbital debris and passive small satellites into Earth-orbit. Maintaining an accurate catalog of all objects in orbit is imperative for understanding the space environment and allowing for precautionary measures to be taken well in advance of any threat of collision between objects. As the sensitivity of ground-based observation facilities increases to be capable of tracking and cataloguing smaller objects in orbit, the limitations of orbit determination methods must be well understood to account for the errors present in initial estimates of an objects orbital state. This paper analyzes the effectiveness of angles-only orbit determination methods when limited observational data is available on an object, with the hope to predict the magnitude of the state error given the amount of observational arc. The analysis uses data obtained from Lockheed Martins Space Object Tracking (SPOT) facility, whose optical instrumentation is capable of both slewing fast enough to track objects in LEO while also having the sensitivity to detect faint objects in GEO. It was found that below 5 degrees there is greater difficulty in reliably predicting a secondary pass of an object, and that the error in each IOD method shows a strong correlation with the amount of observational arc seen.
Date of Conference: September 15-18, 2020
Track: Astrodynamics