Orbit Determination – Some Thoughts on Commercial Innovation
Id: 397
Type: Keynote
Published: 12/17/2025
Event: NASA OD Seminar
Authors:
Click an author to filter the list of related assets below.Abstract:
Orbit Determination (OD) is a topic that always evokes strong sentiments – depending on which method you’re most familiar with! In particular, Batch Least Squares (BLS) approaches are very common, as are commercial implementation of Kalman Filter (KF) approaches. It’s useful to review the history and theory of these approaches, and what problems they’re especially good at solving. Since OD supports the entire Space Domain Awareness operation, including conjunction analyses, it’s important to understand what can be involved in the various approaches. I’ll review some of the theory, and some sample evaluations to demonstrate comparisons of BLS and KF approaches. Covariance is also a related tricky topic – is it realistic, is it accurate, should I use it for conjunction analyses and determination?
Citation:
Vallado, D.A., “Orbit Determination – Some Thoughts on Commercial Innovation.”, Virtual presentation to NASA, 17 Dec 2025.
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