Initial orbit determination for a near-circular orbit of space debris with space-based short-arcs method and experiment.

The large amount of low earth orbit (LEO) space debris has a serious impact on the safe operation of orbital spacecraft. Space-based optical observation is the mainstream development direction for space debris observation. For centimeter sized space debris in LEO, the observable duration obtained by the LEO space-based telescope is relatively short. It is difficult to determine the initial orbit from the single arc of observation, and the error of the initial orbit is difficult to evaluate. Based on the admissible region method, this paper establishes the initial orbit determination and error estimation algorithm. Aiming at the problem that the initial orbit of space-based short-arc optical observation is not easy to be determined, this paper proposes a circular orbit auxiliary admissible region method. The LEO space debris observation experiment on commercial remote sensing satellites is carried out to verify the proposed calculation method, and to lay a foundation for the future research on observation-to-observation association using initial orbits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]