THE PROBABILITY OF A LASER BEAM ILLUMINATING A SPACE OBJECT

摘要

A general method for calculating the probability that a laser beam will illuminate a space object is developed. The method accounts for position, velocity and error covariance matrices of laser emitter and space object. Laser slew rate, pointing uncertainty, beam divergence half cone angle as well as space object size and shape are also included in the formulation. Instantaneous and time dependent impingement probabilities are reduced to one-dimensional contour integrals. The cumulative collision probability is expressed as a simple integral. A software tool was created to implement the method. Results for example data are presented.