Short-Term Space Occupancy and Conjunction Filter

TL;DR

This paper introduces an analytical method to evaluate space occupancy ranges for resident space objects, enhancing conjunction filtering and space traffic management in low-Earth orbit with improved accuracy and efficiency.

Contribution

It generalizes the concept of space occupancy and develops a new conjunction filter that outperforms traditional apogee-perigee filters.

Findings

The new filter significantly improves collision risk assessment.

The method efficiently evaluates RSO altitude ranges over time.

Application to LEO demonstrates practical effectiveness.

Abstract

Conjunction analysis (CA) for resident space objects (RSOs) is essential for preventing collisions in an increasingly crowded orbital environment and preserving the operational integrity of satellites. A first and fundamental step in the CA process is to estimate the range of altitudes that each object can occupy, throughout an operational screening time of, typically, a few days. In this paper, a method is poroposed to analytically evaluate such range of altitudes in a zonal problem model and for a time horizon of generic duration thereby generalizing the concept of space occupancy (SO) introduced in a recent work. The proposed method is exploited to construct a new conjunction filter that considerably improves the classical apogee-perigee filter routinely employed in CA. The effectiveness of the new filter is assessed in a low-Earth orbit (LEO) scenario using a high-fidelity perturbation model across a broad spectrum of orbits and conjunction geometries. Additionally, the method is applied to space traffic management providing a rapid and efficient means to examine the radial overlap of RSOs in LEO and track its progression in time.