My research investigates the (initial) orbit determination (IOD) problem for short-arc angle-only optical observations of satellites. The method is an adaptation of the Constrained Admissible Region Multiple Hypothesis Filter (CAR-MHF) method, as developed by DeMars et al. This a
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My research investigates the (initial) orbit determination (IOD) problem for short-arc angle-only optical observations of satellites. The method is an adaptation of the Constrained Admissible Region Multiple Hypothesis Filter (CAR-MHF) method, as developed by DeMars et al. This adapted method is tested on data obtained from telescopes, where publications by DeMars only tested the method on simulated data. The adapted method of the CAR-MHF was only able to perform IOD for single observation arcs due to the use of the EKF. The CAR-MHF is compared to Gauss’s method, for 582 satellites which had an observation arc with a minimum of 3 data points, the minimum number of observations required. The accuracy performance of both methods are comparable. The CAR-MHF was able to find an IOD solution for 242 satellite, almost 20% more than Gauss’s method. This research is a stepping stone to improve the CAR-MHF method for real-world data applications.
