Related papers: Improved orbit predictions using two-line elements
Launch behaviors are a key determinant of the orbital environment. Physical and economic forces such as fragmentations and changing launch costs, or policies like post-mission disposal (PMD) compliance requirements, will alter the relative…
Atmospheric drag calculation error greatly reduce the low-earth orbit spacecraft trajectory prediction fidelity. To solve the issue, the "correction - prediction" strategy is usually employed. In the method, one parameter is fixed and other…
An important task within the broader goal of Space Situational Awareness (SSA) is to observe changes in the orbits of satellites, where the data spans thousands of objects over long time scales (decades). The Two-Line Element (TLE) data…
Space debris is a major threat to the satellite infrastructure. A collision with even small particle, e.g. 1 cm of size, can cause a catastrophic event when the parent body, spacecraft or upper stage, will break up into hundreds of…
The proliferation of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellations has intensified the challenge of space debris management. This paper introduces DebriSense-THz, a novel Terahertz-Enabled Debris Sensing system for LEO satellites that…
In order to avoid collisions with space debris, the near Earth orbit must be continuously scanned by either ground- or spaced-based facilities. For the low Earth orbit, radar telescopes are the workhorse for this task, especially due to…
As orbital debris continues to become a higher priority for the space industry, there is a need to explore how partnerships between the public and private space sector may aid in addressing this issue. This research develops a space…
A robust drift-safe rendezvous trajectory optimization tool is developed in this work, with applications to orbital rendezvous and proximity operations. The method is based on direct collocation and utilizes a sequential convex programming…
Maneuverable tether-net systems launched from an unmanned spacecraft offer a promising solution for the active removal of large space debris. Guaranteeing the successful capture of such space debris is dependent on the ability to reliably…
The rapid expansion of mega-constellations in low Earth orbits has posed significant challenges to space traffic management, necessitating periodic inspections of satellites to ensure the sustainability of the space environment when…
The collision avoidance constraints are prominent as non-convex, non-differentiable, and challenging when defined in optimization-based motion planning problems. To overcome these issues, this paper presents a novel non-conservative…
We have used an existing, robotic, multi-lens, all-sky camera system, coupled to a dedicated data reduction pipeline, to automatically determine orbital parameters of satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Each of the fixed cameras has a…
The continuously growing number of objects orbiting around the Earth is expected to be accompanied by an increasing frequency of objects re-entering the Earth's atmosphere. Many of these re-entries will be uncontrolled, making their…
Numerical simulations are at the center of predicting the space debris environment of the upcoming decades. In light of debris generating events, such as continued anti-satellite weapon tests and planned mega-constellations, accurate…
Over the several decades, the space debris at LEO has grown rapidly which had caused a serious threat to the operating satellite in an orbit. To avoid the risk of collision and protect the LEO environment, the space robotics ADR concept has…
Environmental research increasingly uses high-dimensional remote sensing and numerical model output to help fill space-time gaps between traditional observations. Such output is often a noisy proxy for the process of interest. Thus one…
Space debris has been posing a serious threat to human space activities and is needed to be measured and cataloged. As a new technology of space target surveillance, the measurement accuracy of DRLR (Diffuse Reflection Laser Ranging) is…
As space becomes increasingly populated with new satellites and systems, modeling and simulating existing and future systems becomes more important. The two-line element set has been a standard format for sharing data about a satellite's…
Here we present observations of 7 large Kuiper Belt Objects. From these observations, we extract a point source catalog with $\sim0.01"$ precision, and astrometry of our target Kuiper Belt Objects with $0.04-0.08"$ precision within that…
For objects in the low Earth orbit region, uncertainty in atmospheric density estimation is an important source of orbit prediction error, which is critical for space situational awareness activities such as the satellite conjunction…