Protecting Space Assets from Debris Danger

Did you know that the increasing number of satellites and space debris poses a real threat to active satellites and astronauts, putting many services on which we depend at risk? Therefore, it is necessary to develop methods to monitor what is happening in orbit and to better assess risks, in order to ensure the integrity of assets in space and also on Earth. ATLAR collaborators are co-authors of a study published this month in the prestigious Acta Astronautica, entitled "Theory of Functional Connection and Nelder-Mead optimization methods applied in satellite characterization" [1]. In this work, two methods are proposed to obtain information about satellite characteristics, such as the relationship between shape and mass. This is done from observations of position and velocity. One of the proposed methods makes use of the recent Functional Connections Theory, which has great potential for characterizing satellites more quickly and accurately. Speed is important for dealing with the increasing number of objects in orbit, especially for calculating the orbit of objects during re-entries. On the other hand,precision is important to ensure the quality of the calculated orbits and to make better predictions of collisions, for example.