meetings - Space Flight Mechanics Committee

Feb 14, 2013 Kauai Salon 1
SESSION 25: SPACE SITUATIONAL AWARENESS AND CONJUNCTION ANALYSIS -- II
Chair: Dr. Ryan Russell, University of Texas at Austin
8:00 AAS Application of a Laser Rangefinder for Space Object Imaging and Shape
13-429 Reconstruction
Michael Nayak, Space Development & Test Directorate, US Air Force; Bogdan
Udrea, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
This paper investigates the application of a laser rangefinder (LRF) for generation of a point
cloud of a Resident Space Object (RSO), with sufficient resolution to provide comparable
registration and shape reconstruction to an imaging LIDAR, for an SSA mission scenario.
We examine a method that employs a combination of relative motion between the chaser
and RSO & chaser attitude motion to perform 3D RSO imaging. These techniques are
applied to reconstructing asteroid 1999-RQ36, of interest to NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission,
and RSOs shaped as generic geostationary telecommunications satellites, and validated with
inclusion of stochastic & pulse-dilation error models.
8:20 AAS Sensitivity Analysis of the Lightcurve Measurement Model for Use in Attitude
13-430 and Shape Estimation of Resident Space Objects
Laura Henderson, The University of Texas at Arlington; Kamesh Subbarao, The
University of Texas at Arlignton
This paper will focus on a recently used light curve measurement model that was based on
developments in the computer graphics area and the information contained therein to
evaluate the model's effectiveness in characterizing the attitude, angular velocty and shape
parameters of an RSO. This evaluation will be performed using synthetic measurements
generated for representative object attitude maneuvers. Numerical sensitivities (observation
matrix) will be computed and a detailed study will be conducted to study the information
present in this measurement.
8:40 AAS Comparing the Reid Cost to the Mahalanobis Distance for Uncorrelated
13-433 Track Association
Cornelius Chow, Pacific Defense Solutions, LLC.; Keric Hill, Pacific Defense
Solutions, LLC.; Joshua Horwood, Numerica Corporation; Chris Sabol, Air Force
Maui Optical and Supercomputing
A central problem faced by the space surveillance community is the problem of track-totrack
association. Under Gaussian assumptions a track state can be characterized by its first
two moments (mean and covariance). As such, the Mahalanobis distance is commonly used
to parametrize the correlation of data sets. However, naive summations of information yield
large association hypervolumes that increase the likelihood of false alarms. The Reid cost
instead scales the product of the probability densities of both tracks by a third fused
estimate. Simulations of 1000 space objects show tremendous improvement in resolving
associations when using Reid’s function.
23 rd AAS / AIAA Space Flight Mechanics Meeting Page 91