Mobile target tracking using a reconfigurable low earth orbit constellation
Name
Morgan_etal_ASCEND2020_Mobile_target_tracking.pdf
Description
Accepted version
Size
713.26 KB
Format
Unknown
Checksum (MD5)
8d12a6a8f4d1e2d91bd884d986f6a209
Author(s)
Morgan, Sarah
McGrath, Ciara N.
de Weck, Olivier L
Date Issued
November 2020
Journal
Accelerating Space Commerce, Exploration, and New Discovery Conference, ASCEND 2020
Publisher
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Citation
2020. "Mobile target tracking using a reconfigurable low earth orbit constellation." Accelerating Space Commerce, Exploration, and New Discovery Conference, ASCEND 2020.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Traditional Earth-observing satellite constellations must preselect orbits to match established mission objectives, inherently limiting the capability of the system to respond to dynamic events. A more flexible approach to constellation design which maneuvers satellites to new orbits throughout the mission lifetime can enable the tracking of mobile targets; such a concept will be explored and evaluated in the following paper. Currently, an existing approach for creating a reconfigurable constellation of satellites (ReCon) demonstrates some increased functionality. However, the repeating ground track (RGT) orbits used are only well-suited for static ground targets (i.e. particular latitude and longitude points) as they are defined by their repetitious passes over the particular points on the globe; inherently these orbits are not ideal for tracking mobile targets such as ships, oil spills, hurricanes, and other weather events. By addressing this gap and designing the constellation to follow these mobile targets, data return can be of higher quality and quantity leading toward improved predictions of future movements. Traditional non-maneuverable satellites may of course capture mobile feature data; however, the quality and quantity of data returned is driven by the satellites’ orbits which were not designed for the particular mobile target. A proposed concept of operations that models possible sequential satellite maneuvers as a graph has shown promise for tracking mobile targets in the case of a single satellite. In the following paper, this concept is further explored by the addition of an optimizer to this method, applied to both a single satellite and a constellation of maneuverable satellites, like ReCon. Results for a tropical storm case study indicate that with relatively low amounts of delta-V per satellite, many possible maneuver combinations are found which result in improved accesses with greater total access time and closer passes. Trade-offs are shown between total target access time, mean distance to targets upon access, and total delta-V used. The performance of increased constellation size is also explored. By having satellites dynamically respond to mobile targets such as hurricanes, satellite imagery and remote sensing can be of better quality and even contribute to better predictions for developing storms.
Description
Approved for public release by The Aerospace Corporation. OTR 2020-00938
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Institute for Data, Systems, and Society
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2020-4247
