DATA FUSION FOR GEOSYNCHRONOUS SATELLITE ORBIT DETERMINATION
- Paper number
IAC-11,A6,1,10,x11093
- Author
Mr. David Vallado, Center for Space Standards and Innovation, United States
- Coauthor
Mr. Vladimir Agapov, Russia
- Coauthor
Mr. Joseph Chan, United States
- Coauthor
Mr. Dean Hope, United Kingdom
- Coauthor
Mr. Pascal Wauthier, Luxemburg
- Year
2011
- Abstract
Accurately tracking geosynchronous satellites is a complex task that requires significant resources, processing, and time. The importance of the GEO belt for communication and other missions ensures operators will continue to want more and more resources on orbit. With increasing numbers of objects, conjunction analysis is becoming more important for the large number of debris and active satellites in the region. In some cases, active satel-lites closely approach one another. Conjunction analysis requires precise orbital locations on all objects, and maintaining a complete catalog means sensors are needed all over the world. The Space Data Association (SDA) processes data from a variety of satellite owner operators. The orbit determination usually consists of ranging information from a few sensors, often located to optimize the communication payload. Sometimes, there is limited geographic dispersion of the sensors with respect to the GEO satellites. This can introduce observability problems that are sometimes challenging to overcome, and can be limiting in the accuracy achievable for the OD solutions. There are several organizations that have deep space sensor resources, however there is little sharing of observational data to support orbit determination activities. This paper explores fusing real-world owner operator observational data with simulated optical measurements to understand what performance improvements could be expected. Various comparisons are made in-cluding positional and covariance histories, residual, and overlap comparisons.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
(absent)