Work

Short-term space occupancy and conjunction filter

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Conjunction analysis (CA) for resident space objects (RSOs) is essential for preventing collisions in an increasingly crowded orbital environment and preserving the operational integrity of satellites. A first and fundamental step in the CA process is to estimate the range of altitudes that each object can occupy throughout an operational screening time of, typically, a few days. In this paper, a method is proposed to analytically evaluate such range of altitudes in a zonal problem model and for a time horizon of generic duration thereby generalizing the concept of space occupancy (SO) introduced in a recent work. The proposed method is exploited to construct a new conjunction filter that considerably improves the classical apogee-perigee filter routinely employed in CA. The effectiveness of the new filter is assessed in a low-Earth orbit (LEO) scenario using a high-fidelity perturbation model across a broad spectrum of orbits and conjunction geometries.

Source: Advances in Space Research

DOI: 10.1016/j.asr.2025.06.040

Authors: Ana S. Rivero, Claudio Bombardelli, Rafael Vazquez

Institutions: Universidad de Sevilla, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid

Language: English

Topic: Space Satellite Systems and Control

Subfield: Aerospace Engineering

Field: Engineering

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $2,780