Sensor Tasking for Space Situational Awareness in Cislunar Space
K. Agarwal (TU Delft - Aerospace Engineering)
S. Gehly – Mentor (TU Delft - Astrodynamics & Space Missions)
P.L.N. Ngo – Mentor (TU Delft - Astrodynamics & Space Missions)
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Abstract
Cislunar space is emerging as a critical regime for future space missions. However, dedicated Space Situational Awareness (SSA) capabilities beyond Earth orbit remain limited. This thesis develops a simulation-based framework to design and assess space-based cislunar observers together with their sensor tasking strategies. Using the Earth-Moon Circular Restricted Three-Body Problem, representative catalogs of target and observer orbits are modeled, and an angles-only optical sensor with realistic exclusion constraints is simulated. Target states are estimated with an Extended Kalman Filter, while greedy schedulers based on information gain (IG), age-of-information, and finite-time Lyapunov exponent rewards are compared. The analysis shows that cislunar observers, particularly L2 halo orbits with IG tasking, dramatically outperform Earth-based sensors and reveal strong couplings between observational geometry and estimation accuracy. Age-of-information yields a simple, robust baseline, whereas the FTLE-based reward performs poorly in this formulation.