Who's Looking at Who?

Dr. Ryan Coder's article Space-Object Active Control Mode Inference Using Light Curve Inversion, recently accepted by the AIAA Journal of Guidance, Control, and Navigation, investigates how to infer some of what Space Objects (SOs) are doing on-orbit.

The method is based on light curve inversion and Rao-Blackwellized 3-degree-of-freedom attitude particle filters to infer a time history of the attitude of actively maneuvering SOs. The method is unique in that it does not strictly require the mass properties or control inputs for the object in question. Dr. Coder also investigates using angular momentum and kinetic energy analogs to determine when a space object may be changing active control modes. Finally, the paper demonstrates how to infer the observation subject of an active SO only by observing the active SO and testing hypotheses.

In a separate paper, Dr. Coder demonstrated the methodology using real ground-based telescope observations of the Hubble Space Telescope to infer which celestial object it was observing.

Please join me in congratulating Dr. Ryan Coder on this publication.