Abstract AAS 97-687

AAS 97-687

MAINTAINING THE SPACE OBJECT CATALOG WITH SPECIAL PERTURBATIONS

H. Neal - GRC International, Inc., S. Coffey - Naval Research Laboratory, and

Abstract

This paper examines the benefits and problems associated with maintaining a space object catalog using numerical integration, commonly referred to as special perturbations, to propagate the orbits. Although special perturbations requires significant computational resources, it offers advantages in accuracy and in the flexibility of force modeling over the analytic propagation methods currently in use. The computational requirement was met by distributing the work load across multiple processors. The catalog maintenance program was implemented in a distributed parallel processing environment called Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM). We compare the accuracy of special perturbations versus analytic methods and examine the effects of orbit type, observation density, sequential versus batch processing, and other factors on special perturbations catalog maintenance.