Space Domain Awareness (SDA) requires accurate prediction and estimation of a space-object catalog to identify risks to existing missions, detect anomalous events in the space domain, and ensure a safe environment for future operations. This requires an inter-disciplinary approach to SDA that leverages astrodynamics, information fusion, statistical and data sciences, and other fields of engineering and mathematics. This presentation highlights recent work at UT-Austin in computationally efficient uncertainty propagation and Bayes-optimal multi-target filtering for improved SDA. A multi-fidelity approach to orbit-state probability density function propagation leverages a hierarchy of satellite force models to reduce computation time for Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) and Gaussian Mixture methods leveraging the unscented transform. Such tools may potentially be leveraged for multi-target tracking with next-generation catalogs that anticipate >100,000 space objects, or increase flexibility for cases that require an SMC approach. Propagation of uncertainty using separated representations mitigates the curse of dimensionality for uncertainty quantification, enables high-dimensional sensitivity analysis for astrodynamics problems, and facilitates an approach to collision avoidance maneuver design that considers collision probability in the solution formulation. Finally, highlights in related work in single- and multi-target tracking are presented to maintain custody of space objects.

Dr. Brandon Jones is an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Austin in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics. He was previously a Research Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he also completed his Ph.D. He and his students conduct research in space domain awareness, multi-target filtering and tracking, computational methods for orbit state and uncertainty propagation, and satellite navigation. Dr. Jones’s research and software tools are used as part of the intra-formation conjunction assessment system for NASA’s Magnetospheric Multi-Scale (MMS) mission. Dr. Jones has previously worked for or with the Air Force Research Laboratories, the NASA Johnson Space Center, Goddard Space Flight Center, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on research related to space domain awareness, uncertainty quantification, multi-fidelity methods, and robust mission design.