Probabilistic Admissible Region for Short-Arc Angles-Only Observations

The admissible region is defined as the set of physically acceptable orbits (i.e., orbits with negative energies). Given additional constraints on orbital semi-major axis, eccentricity, etc, the admissible region is further constrained, resulting in the constrained admissible region (CAR). Based on known statistics of the measurement process, in this paper we replace hard constraints with a probabilistic representation of the admissible region. This results in the probabilistic admissible region (PAR) that can be used for orbit initiation in Bayesian tracking. While this is a general concept that is applicable to any measurement scenario, we will illustrate the idea using a short-arc, angles-only observation scenario. In the Advanced Maui Optical and Space Surveillance Technologies (AMOS) Conference, 9-12 Sep 2014, Maui, HI.