Analytic Initial Orbit Determination using Satellite Streaks in Digital Images

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Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering
The Daniel Guggenheim School of Aeronautics was established in 1931, with a name change in 1962 to the School of Aerospace Engineering
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https://hdl.handle.net/1853/74903
Abstract
Earth orbiting satellites often appear as streaks in images collected by inertially pointed cameras or telescopes. This work presents a novel method of initial orbit determination (IOD) by recognizing that such streaks define a plane tangent to the observed satellite's orbit and passing through the sensor's location. Using results from algebraic projective geometry, an analytic IOD solution may be found by solving for the disk quadric defining the 3D orbit. This solution is exact, recovering the orbit to within machine precision for two-body motion and without measurement noise. Performance in the presence of noisy measurements is also discussed.
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2021-08
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