Orbit Uncertainty Propagation of a Tumbling High Area-to-mass-ratio Space Object

Space surveillance tracking problems, that are characterized by sparse observation data, necessitate long-term orbit propagation. For high area-to-mass-ratio space objects, long-term orbit uncertainty propagation needs to account for both conservative and non-conservative effect, such as the effect of solar radiation pressure, which results in non-negligible coupling between the orbital motion and the attitude motion, and a high-dimensional uncertainty propagation problem. The sparse grid method and theMonte Carlo methods are presented for orbit uncertainty propagation and are compared in the numerical simulation of a tumbling, high area-tomass-ratio space object, whose attitude and angular velocity are unknown. The advantage of these methods is that they are non-intrusive and straightforward to implement and can accommodate Gaussian and non-Gaussian parametric uncertainties in the orbital and attitude motion models.