Laura Pirovano, NorthStar Earth & Space, Inc.; Naron Phou, NorthStar Earth & Space, Inc.; Catherine Massé, NorthStar Earth & Space, Inc.; Narendra Gollu, NorthStar Earth & Space, Inc.; Yann Picard, NorthStar Earth & Space, Inc.
https://doi.org/10.64861/JPTP3221
Keywords: space-based, SSA, data association, UCT, track association, catalogue maintenance
Abstract:
The rapid growth of the Earth-orbiting object population has increased the operational burden on Space Situational Awareness (SSA) systems tasked with maintaining an accurate catalogue of resident space objects (RSOs). A persistent challenge is the association of uncorrelated tracks (UCTs); the unresolved backlog drives catalogue incompleteness, duplicated object entries, and analyst workload.
This paper presents an operationally deployed framework for track-to-orbit (or UCT-to-catalogue) association, tested on commercially provided surveillance data and interacting with an existing SSA pipeline. In the present scope, an initial orbit estimate is always available and the dominant challenge is throughput: screening each incoming UCT against a large catalogue quickly enough to regain custody.
The method combines and extends two established mitigations for data association: a linearized association subspace and an Admissible Region (AR)-based pre-filtering stage. ARs are, in general, large and computationally expensive to sample; here, the AR is instead tightened a priori around the available initial condition, rejecting incompatible candidates at negligible cost before any statistical association is attempted.
The framework accommodates maneuvers or unmodeled errors, the likely source of loss of custody in the first place, and uses the surviving ARs to refine the RSO state ahead of association. Results are reported using FireOPAL commercial SSA observation data for the regained custody of an RSO moving from GTO to GEO.
Date of Conference: September 15-18, 2026
Track: Astrodynamics