313 / 2023-10-13 11:09:28

Initial orbit determination of space debris with ground based optical observation

space debris,optical observation,initial orbit dterminaiton,Commercial Spaceflight

Near-earth space orbit is getting crowded, especially in LEO. Optical telescopes are an important means of monitoring space debris in LEO and GEO. With the rapid development of commercial space in recent years, optical space surveillance equipment is constantly being built and is playing an increasingly important role. Based on the observation arc observed by ground-based telescopes at several stations, the range-searching method is used to determine the initial orbit elements of space debris. Taking the semi-major element and the inclination as examples, the IOD elements errors are estimated with the known reference orbit (usually TLE).

The Range search method for IOD with very short arc is improved in this paper. The implementation process is as follows. First, the values of ρ1 and ρn can be assumed respectively within a certain interval and with a certain step size, so that a set of orbital parameters can be calculated for each starting value combination. Based on this set of orbit parameters, the angle starting values at other times can be calculated and compared with the actual starting values. Quality control is performed based on the residuals to filter out appropriate orbit determination results. According to the above method, generally one arc segment will obtain multiple sets of Kepler orbit parameters. Finally, an optimal solution is obtained from multiple sets of solutions through certain screening criteria as the final preliminary determination result. This method is basically independent of the arc length and only solves the Lambert problem, while the quality of the solution is controlled by other incremental values. The IOD results are analyzed at last. The duration of the arc mainly ranges from 20 to 100s. IOD with such observation with the RS method, the results of the IOD elements are as follow. Obrt 90% of the angle observation arcs can obtain a solution. The arithmetic mean value of the semi-major element error is mainly about 10~30 km. The arithmetic mean value of the inclination is less than 0.1 deg.