Abstract AAS 97-607

AAS 97-607

A DYNAMIC ALGORITHM FOR PROCESSING UNCORRELATED TRACKS

K.T. Alfriend - Texas A&M University

Abstract

Tracks of space objects which do not correlate to a known space object are called uncorrelated tracks (UCTs). The association of UCTs to develop an ephemeris, and subsequently a new catalogued object, has typically been a manual process which requires significant time by the analysts. The algorithm used for track association is a static algorithm in that it does not directly take into consideration the uncertainties in the ephemerides determined from the individual tracks. In this paper a dynamic algorithm based on the track uncertainty (covariance) is proposed and analyzed. The efficacy of the algorithm is based on two new properties: a) The volume of the equiprobability ellipsoid is constant in time, even though the shape changes, and b) The probability of association is maximized by using this ellipsoid for association.