Design and Analysis of Space Objects Tracking Algorithm
Kanagambujam Venkatramani, Elayaperumal Subramaniyan · 2023
Space object tracking plays a critical role in space situational awareness, collision avoidance, and the overall safety and efficiency of space operations. With the ever-increasing number of active satellites, debris fragments, and other celestial bodies in orbit around the Earth, accurate and reliable tracking systems are essential for monitoring their positions and trajectories. Conventional methods for space object tracking include radar, optical telescopes, and satellite-based tracking using GNSS. Extended Kalman Filter, unscented Kalman filter, batch least squares method, particle filter method and numerical integration techniques are generally employed for orbit determination. This research focuses on using the Keplerian approximation for orbit determination, a simple yet effective approach based on Kepler’s laws. It offers computational efficiency and is particularly valuable for initial orbit determination. This paper demonstrates comparisons of orbit plots and presents error analysis for the obtained results.