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Engineering Commons

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Space Vehicles

Air Force Institute of Technology

Theses/Dissertations

2008

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Full-Text Articles in Engineering

Space Based Satellite Tracking And Characterization Utilizing Non-Imaging Passive Sensors, Bradley R. Townsend Mar 2008

Space Based Satellite Tracking And Characterization Utilizing Non-Imaging Passive Sensors, Bradley R. Townsend

Theses and Dissertations

A technique is developed to determine the orbit of a sunlight illuminated satellite passing through the field-of-view of a sensor platform in a Highly Elliptical Orbit (HEO) and Geosynchronous orbit (GEO). The technique develops two different methods of initial orbit determination. The first relies on the Gauss initial orbit determination method to develop an estimate of the state from angular data. The second method relies on positional data of the target relative to the Earth’s background to determine an estimate of the state. These estimates are then refined in a non-linear least squares routine. This estimate of the state is …