DESIGN DEVELOPMENT OF CORRELATION TECHNIQUES TO MAINTAIN A SPACE SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM CATALOGUE

摘要

An increasing interest exists in a future, autonomous European Space Surveillance System (ESSS). Currently, most of the knowledge on Earth-orbiting space objects is based on information provided by the USASPACECOM. This paper presents the required initial orbit determination and correlation techniques to process optical measurements. Former studies were focused on the handling of radar measurements, which will also be summarised with the aim of describing a global procedure for processing hybrid measurement types (combination of radar and optic data for catalogue maintenance). Introduction of manoeuvres will also be presented due to the importance of this aspect in the space object catalogue maintenance. The detection of uncatalogued objects and successful correlation of already catalogued objects involves two different tasks for the telescopes: survey and tasking. Assumptions for both strategies are developed in the basis of previous work developed at the University of Berne (see [1], [2], [3], [4] and [5]) When a new object appears in the field of view, initial orbit determination must be performed. When only one telescope per site is available, the initial measurements are separated by only few seconds. Therefore, the initial orbit determination is quite inaccurate due to bad mathematical conditioning of the problem. In order to improve the' accuracy of the initial orbit determination, several follow-up observations of the object are required. That implies that the telescope needs to track the detected objects during a long period, and therefore the time available for surveying is reduced. By processing the additional follow-up measurements, separated now by a few hours, the initial orbit determination gives more accurate results and the object can be recovered after an orbital revolution. When several telescopes per site are available, the optical strategies may be modified. The survey tasks can be distributed between the available telescopes. In this way the number of images corresponding to each object increases and to track the detected object during long periods is not always needed. Numerical results will be shown in order to evaluate the accuracy and features of the different telescope strategies. A key point for performing efficiently the cataloguing process is the calculation of the estimated state vector covariance matrix. The covariance matrix analysis will allow an adaptive tasking-survey telescope scheduling. Moreover, the implementation of a proper batch orbit determination process by means of a Square Root Information Filter (SRIF) requires a realistic initial covariance matrix. Hybrid measurements are available from objects that can be observed by both radar and optical sensors (e.g. GTO objects). The batch orbit determination and correlation process of hybrid measurements is also based on SRIF using an extended measurement model. Both initial orbit determination methods using radar and optical measurements have to be sufficiently accurate to initialise SRIF correctly. In order to avoid filter divergence, estimated covariance must be correctly updated after processing both kinds of measurements. The implemented algorithms will be explained and their performance will be shown through realistic simulations. Techniques to detect and characterise object manoeuvres during the cataloguing process have been developed and implemented. Four main groups of manoeuvre objects have been established by means of their observed permitted orbital ranges (GEO, LEO, MEO-GPS, Molniya). The study is based on the historical TLEs files. When an object with an uncatalogued orbit appears, a comparison between the new orbit and the orbits contained in the permitted ranges of one of the manoeuvre groups is performed. If the required Aa and/or Ai to convert the lost orbit into the detected orbit seem to be feasible, a manoeuvre will be identified and the orbit will be updated in the catalogue. Otherwise, it will be decided that a new o