Orbit Determination – Some Thoughts on Commercial Innovation

Discipline: Flight Mechanics

Abstract:
Orbit Determination (OD) is a topic that always evokes strong sentiments – depending on which method you’re most familiar with! In particular, Batch Least Squares (BLS) approaches are very common, as are commercial implementation of Kalman Filter (KF) approaches. It’s useful to review the history and theory of these approaches, and what problems they’re especially good at solving. Since OD supports the entire Space Domain Awareness operation, including conjunction analyses, it’s important to understand what can be involved in the various approaches. I’ll review some of the theory, and some sample evaluations to demonstrate comparisons of BLS and KF approaches. Covariance is also a related tricky topic – is it realistic, is it accurate, should I use it for conjunction analyses and determination?

About Speaker:
Lt Col (USAF Ret) David A. Vallado is currently a Senior Research Astrodynamicist with COMSPOC in the Center for Space Standards and Innovation. He is the author of the textbook, Fundamentals of Astrodynamics and Applications (5th edition, 2022). He is a Fellow in the American Astronautical Society (2006). He has a BS in Astronautical Engineering in 1980 from the US Air Force Academy, a MS in Systems Management from the University of Southern California in 1982 and a MS in Astronautical Engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) in 1984. After retiring from the Air Force, he was a Principal Engineer with Raytheon Intelligence and Information Systems and an Astrodynamics Researcher with Analytical Graphics Inc.

He has hiked all 58 mountains in Colorado over 14000 feet, twice. Dave’s other interests include jogging, biking, woodworking, house construction, classical piano, and swimming.