Improving Orbit Determination for Geostationary Satellites via Data Fusion

Intelsat Ltd. (IS), SKY Perfect JSAT Corporation (SJC) and IHI Corporation (IHI) conducted a joint study to evaluate accuracies and error covariance of determined orbits for IS and SJC satellites by using solo optical observed data from IHI optical observation demonstrator, and combined data from tradition ranging data. Optical data has proven to be very useful for space surveillance and close approach monitoring providing improved orbital knowledge of both active and non-active space objects. As satellite operators we are also interested in using optical data to complement our standard ranging measurements to improve our orbit uncertainties and help to resolve and calibrate sensor biases. In the first phase of our join study IHI provided optical observations for both IS and SJC satellites and we will present the multi-objectives of our join study and preliminary results in the orbit comparisons and error estimations from different fusion techniques.