Knowledge Bank

Every untracked, inactive, or unfamiliar object in Earth's orbit poses a risk to satellites and rockets that wish to safely navigate through space. Objects of this nature, known as "space debris," will remain in orbit without deliberate intervention. The purpose of this project is to perform a highly accurate retrospective analysis of a certain outstanding close-approach event (also known as a conjunction event) that occurred in the geostationary belt. It is expected that the successful completion of this work will result in a trustworthy prognostics tool that can help minimize, or even eliminate, such risk in the future. Events related to candidate resident space objects were considered, and the 2016 Briz-M rocket body explosion was chosen as the particular event of interest. By appropriately modeling the motion of such candidates through astrodynamics analysis and adjusting the initial conditions to reflect sensor precision, a recently developed adaptive Monte Carlo method, a MATLAB-based forecasting platform, can be employed to propagate a particle cloud representing the object's orbit over time. The completion of this project will validate the methods used, while simultaneously reducing the risks of collision and damage in similar events in the future.