Timothy S. Murphy, The Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering – Georgia Institute of Technology, Marcus J. Holzinger, The Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering – Georgia Institute of Technology
Keywords: Astrodynamics, UCT, Follow up, Telescope, Tasking
Abstract:
This work proposes a methodology for tasking of sensors to search an area of state space for a particular object, group of objects, or class of objects. This work creates a general unified mathematical framework for analyzing reacquisition, search, scheduling, and custody operations. In particular, this work looks at searching for unknown space object(s) with prior knowledge in the form of a set, which can be defined via an uncorrelated track, region of state space, or a variety of other methods. The follow-up tasking can occur from a variable location and time, which often requires searching a large region of the sky. This work analyzes the area of a search region over time to inform a time optimal search method. Simulation work looks at analyzing search regions relative to a particular sensor, and testing a tasking algorithm to search through the region. The tasking algorithm is also validated on a reacquisition problem with a telescope system at Georgia Tech.
Date of Conference: September 19-22, 2017
Track: Tasking