Bhattarai, Santosh; Brownhall, Indigo; Constant, Charles; Peto-Madew, Felicia; Rotherham, Eugene; (2024) Orbit Domain Calibration for Space Surveillance & Tracking (ODC4SST): Design Concept, Network Selection & Initial Validation Tests. Presented at: COSPAR 2024: 45th Scentific Assembly, Busan, South Korea.

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Abstract

Human activity in space is increasing at an accelerating pace. The number of active satellites on orbit is predicted to rise five-fold from about 10,000 today (February 2024) to more than 50,000 by 2030. This dramatic and unprecedented growth in anthropogenic space objects in orbit must be carefully monitored and managed. To support this, space surveillance and tracking (SST) service providers must advance their ability to know where things are in space and where they are going, and they must provide their orbit solutions (i.e., position and velocity estimates) with quality metrics to relevant stakeholders (e.g., satellite operators) in a timely and transparent manner to ensure trust. The performance of current SST systems (best case 3D position error at the level of kilometres) is not acceptable to meet future needs. At present, the SST community is hampered by the lack of a widely accepted system for evaluating the absolute 3D accuracy of orbit solutions. This creates difficulties for developers of the next generation of SST technologies to assess performance and to calibrate their systems. This project seeks to address this problem by establishing an orbit domain calibration (ODC) system (on-orbit network + data modelling methods and tools) designed to support SST technology developers to achieve accurate orbit solutions across the full range of operational orbital regimes from Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO;<500km altitude) all the way up to Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) at 35,786km altitude. The core idea is to exploit recent advances in orbit determination that have led to precise orbits (i.e., centimetre-level absolute accuracy position solutions) now being routinely published by scientific mission operators. We propose to investigate whether these precise orbits can be used as reference standards to calibrate the orbit solutions produced by SST systems. Our novel concept of precise orbits as reference standards for SST aims to bridge the gap between current SST practice and the state-of-the-art in orbit determination. This concept has never been systematically tested before. The success of this concept will require efforts to build awareness and support within the SST stakeholder community. In this contribution, we shall present our recent work aimed at development and validation of the ODC4SST idea including concept-level design(s) of the ODC system architecture; literature review and data gathering work to support ODC network selection with an initial focus on LEO (<2000km); and a proof-of-concept study using the pair of satellites from GRACE Follow-On mission and other satellites flying in the orbital neighbourhood of the Grace Follow-On satellites.

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