AAS 98-113

DEMONSTRATION OF A SPECIAL-PERTURBATIONS-BASED CATALOG IN THE NAVAL SPACE COMMAND SYSTEM

S. L. Coffey - Naval Research Laboratory; H. L. Neal - GRC International; C. L. Visel- HQ USSPACECOM; P. Conolly - Naval Space Command

Abstract

During the Fall of 1997, a special perturbations system, called SPeCIAL-K, will be installed at Naval Space Command. This system runs on a group of computers that comprise a virtual parallel processing system, layered on top of the PVM environment. With this system we hope to demonstrate the following: that it is feasible to maintain the space object catalog with special perturbations, to determine the amount of operator intervention necessary to process the objects that fail to converge normally, determine the computer resources required to maintain the catalog with SP, determine the robustness of the SP vectors, and gain information concerning improved accuracy of special perturbations vectors for all objects in the general catalog with standard tasking of the SSN sensors. SPeCIAL-K can be easily scaled to maintain a catalog of 50,000 or more objects with special perturbations, the only modifications necessary would be the addition of more computers, not modification of the software. The next generation of radars being designed for Naval Space Command may generate observations on such a large catalog, necessitating a parallel processing approach to processing the data.

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