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    • Associating optical measurements of geocentric objects with a Genetic Algorithm: application to experimental data.

    Paper number

    IAC-16,A6,9,5,x32888

    Coauthor

    Mr. Michiel Zittersteijn, Astronomical Institute University of Bern (AIUB), Switzerland

    Coauthor

    Prof. Thomas Schildknecht, Astronomical Institute University of Bern (AIUB) / SwissSpace Association, Switzerland

    Coauthor

    Dr. Alessandro Vananti, Astronomical Institute University of Bern (AIUB), Switzerland

    Coauthor

    Mr. Juan Carlos Dolado Perez, Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES), France

    Coauthor

    Mr. Vincent Martinot, Thales Alenia Space France, France

    Year

    2016

    Abstract
    Currently several thousands of objects are being tracked in the
MEO and GEO regions through optical means. With the advent of improved sensors and a heightened interest in the problem of space
debris, it is expected that the number of tracked objects will grow by an order of magnitude in the near future. This research aims to provide a method that can treat the correlation and orbit determination problems simultaneously, and is able to efficiently process large data sets with minimal manual intervention. This problem is also known as the Multiple Target Tracking (MTT) problem. The complexity of the MTT problem is defined by its dimension S. Current research tends to focus on the S = 2 MTT problem. The reason for this is that for S = 2 the problem has a P-complexity. However, with S = 2 the decision to associate a set of observations is based on the minimum amount of information, in ambiguous situations (e.g. satellite clusters) this will lead to incorrect associations. The S $>$ 2 MTT problem is an NP-hard combinatorial optimization problem. In previous work an Elitist Genetic Algorithm (EGA) was proposed as a method to approximately
solve this problem. It was shown that the EGA is able to find a good approximate solution with a polynomial time complexity. In this work the algorithm is applied to follow-up observations taken by the ZimSMART and ZimSpace telescopes of the Zimmerwald observatory. In the ambiguous case of correlating the observations of a satellite cluster, the results are compared to those of an enumerative algorithm.
    Abstract document

    IAC-16,A6,9,5,x32888.brief.pdf

    Manuscript document

    IAC-16,A6,9,5,x32888.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).

    To get the manuscript, please contact IAF Secretariat.