Demonstration of Orbit Determination for LEO Objects using the Murchison Widefield Array

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the use of the Murchison Widefield Array for orbit determination of LEO objects, showing promising accuracy and potential for space domain awareness applications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method for orbit determination using radio frequency observations from the MWA, validated against TLE data, and discusses mitigation strategies for radio astronomy.

Findings

Median positional uncertainty of ~860 m cross-track and ~780 m in-track.

Orbit predictions improve with multiple orbit data.

Method shows close agreement with TLE updates.

Abstract

The rapidly increasing number of satellites in Earth's orbit motivates the development of Space Domain Awareness (SDA) capabilities using wide field-of-view sensor systems that can perform simultaneous detections. This work demonstrates preliminary orbit determination capability for Low Earth Orbit objects using the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) at commercial FM frequencies. The developed method was tested on observations of 32 satellite passes and the extracted measurements were used to perform orbit determination for the targets using a least-squares fitting approach. The target satellites span a range in altitude and Radar Cross Section, providing examples of both high and low signal-to-noise detections. The estimated orbital elements for the satellites are validated against the publicly available TLE updates provided by the Space Surveillance Network (SSN) and the preliminary estimates are found to be in close agreement. The work successfully test for re-acquisition using the determined orbital elements and finds the prediction to improve when multiple orbits are used for orbit determination. The median uncertainty in the angular position for objects in LEO (range less than 1000 km) is found to be 860 m in the cross-track direction and 780 m in the in-track direction, which are comparable to the typical uncertainty of 1 km in the publicly available TLE. The techniques, therefore, demonstrate the MWA to be capable of being a valuable contributor to the global SDA community. Based on the understanding of the MWA SDA system, this paper also briefly describes methods to mitigate the impact of FM-reflecting LEO satellites on radio astronomy observations, and how maintaining a catalog of FM-reflecting LEO objects is in the best interests of both SDA and radio astronomy.