C. Kebschull, Institute of Space Systems – TU Braunschweig, L. Reichstein, Institute of Space Systems – TU Braunschweig, E. Stoll, Institute of Space Systems – TU Braunschweig
Keywords: Measurement Generation, Orbit Determination, Simulation
Abstract:
Many states in Europe are participating in the build-up of an independent Space Situational Awareness (SSA) programme. One goal is to combine national assets like radar and telescope stations and share the data amongst the participating states. Within the EU and the ESA SSA programs have been setup to enable the collaboration between the different nation states. In order to get an idea of the capabilities of the different SSA system configurations the Institute of Space Systems (IRAS) has been developing a simulation software suite. Its main goal is to evaluate the performance of a given SSA system configuration. The paper outlines the architecture of the simulation software. Each integrated module necessary to achieve the complex simulation is described. A focus lies on the module to generate artificial Radar measurements, which are modelled on the microsecond time scale and the Orbit Determination (OD) module. The measurement generation module is able to generate noisy data. Based on variations like the noise level, the frequency of observation and the type of observed objects a sensitivity analysis is performed. The OD module is able to use different initial or statistical OD algorithms and configurations. Given the different levels of noise in the artificial measurements the achieved accuracies of OD configurations are analysed. The paper concludes with best practice recommendations for the use of different OD settings based on the chosen scenario.
Date of Conference: September 19-22, 2017
Track: Poster