An Approach for two Line Element Generation of Resident Space Objects from Radar/Optical Telescope Observations

Abstract

For safeguarding the space assets, it is imperative on our part to know about the location of Resident Space Objects (RSO) in space. Two-Line Element Sets (TLEs) are indispensable in the assessment of a RSO’s orbit in space and thereby it helps in overcoming threats to space assets by appropriate action. In the present work, we have proposed an approach to generate TLE of all the RSOs using long arc/short arc estimated orbit from RADAR/Optical Telescope based multi-arc, multi stations observations from Indian stations. This estimated orbit is used as initial guess for TLE for refined estimation. Results are compared with the estimated precise orbit which demonstrates that the proposed methodology generate fair TLE that can be consistent with the available ones and hence this TLE generation methodology can serve as an alternative tool for generating TLEs of RSOs in space.