Early cataloguing of fragments from break-up events

Pastor Rodríguez, Alejandro; Siminski, J.; Escribano Blázquez, Guillermo; Sanjurjo Rivo, Manuel; Escobar, D.

Publication:
Early cataloguing of fragments from break-up events

dc.affiliation.dpto	UC3M. Departamento de Ingeniería Aeroespacial	es
dc.affiliation.grupoinv	UC3M. Grupo de Investigación: Ingeniería Aeroespacial	es
dc.contributor.author	Pastor Rodríguez, Alejandro	es
dc.contributor.author	Siminski, J.	es
dc.contributor.author	Escribano Blázquez, Guillermo	es
dc.contributor.author	Sanjurjo Rivo, Manuel	es
dc.contributor.author	Escobar, D.	es
dc.contributor.funder	Comunidad de Madrid	es
dc.date.accessioned	2023-11-24T18:20:13Z
dc.date.available	2023-11-24T18:20:13Z
dc.date.issued	2023-05-15
dc.description.abstract	Break-up events represent the dominant source of objects in space catalogues, surpassing half of the overall population. These not so uncommon events include explosions, collisions or anomalous events resulting in fragmentations and their number is estimated to be higher than 630. The early cataloguing of the fragments generated during these events poses a complex challenge for space objects catalogue build-up and maintenance processes. The provision of Space Surveillance and Tracking products and services during the few first days after a break-up event can be crucial to avoid collisions between the fragments and other space objects, particularly in highly congested regimes, such as Low Earth Orbit. In this regard, reducing the time required to accurately estimate the trajectories of the fragments may enable the execution of collision avoidance manoeuvres, in the case of operational space objects with manoeuvre capabilities, and analyse potential collision cascade events, which may endanger the space environment. This paper studies the whole cataloguing process after a break-up event, starting from a catalogue with no fragments from the fragmentation under-analysis, and until a well-established orbit is obtained for all fragments, using a ground-based sensor network. First, the observations enter a multi-sensor multi-target track-to-track association algorithm in charge of grouping observations belonging to the same objects. To resolve the ambiguity, particularly shortly after the event, hypotheses about tracks belonging to the same fragment are generated, scored, pruned, and promoted, only when there is enough confidence, leading to the initialisation of new objects in the catalogue. As soon as the catalogue is populated, a track-to-orbit correlation algorithm is responsible for the correlation of observations and already catalogued orbits. This alleviates the track-to-track association and enables the update of the orbital estimates, required for maintaining the catalogue.	en
dc.description.sponsorship	This work was conducted during the research stay of A. Pastor in the ESA Space Debris Office at ESOC in Darmstadt. The corresponding author greatly appreciates the warm welcome, interest and support of the whole team. This project has received funding from the ”Comunidad de Madrid” under ”Ayudas destinadas a la realización de doctorados industriales” program (project IND2017/TIC7700).	en
dc.description.status	Publicado	es
dc.format.extent	17
dc.identifier.bibliographicCitation	A. Pastor, J. Siminski, G. Escribano, M. Sanjurjo-Rivo, D. Escobar. "Early cataloguing of fragments from break-up events". Advances in Space Research. Volume 71, Issue 10, 15 May 2023, Pages 4222-4238 (17p.).	en
dc.identifier.doi	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asr.2023.02.016
dc.identifier.issn	0273-1177
dc.identifier.publicationfirstpage	4222
dc.identifier.publicationissue	10
dc.identifier.publicationlastpage	4238
dc.identifier.publicationtitle	Advances in Space Research	en
dc.identifier.publicationvolume	71
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/10016/38952
dc.identifier.uxxi	AR/0000033556
dc.language.iso	eng	en
dc.publisher	Elsevier B.V.	en
dc.relation.projectID	Comunidad de Madrid. IND2017/TIC-7700	es
dc.rights	© 2023 COSPAR.	en
dc.rights	Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.	en
dc.rights	Atribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 3.0 España	en
dc.rights.accessRights	open access	en
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/es/	*
dc.subject.eciencia	Astronomía	es
dc.subject.eciencia	Física	es
dc.subject.other	Break-Up Events	en
dc.subject.other	Catalogue Build-Up	en
dc.subject.other	Catalogue Maintenance	en
dc.subject.other	Space Debris	en
dc.title	Early cataloguing of fragments from break-up events	en
dc.type	research article	*
dc.type.hasVersion	VoR	*
dspace.entity.type	Publication