Providing orbit information with predetermined bounded accuracy

argument #415

Providing orbit information with predetermined bounded accuracy

Collision-avoidance warnings are only as good as the orbit data every party shares — this is the plumbing that lets thousands of operators agree on where every object is, at the accuracy each is entitled to, without each re-running the math.

Instead of handing satellite operators raw time-tagged position tables (forcing every operator to extrapolate on his own), orbit data can be delivered as Chebyshev polynomial coefficients that directly encode the state vector and covariance matrix over a time span — derived from a reference orbit by a least-squares fit with a modified geopotential, producing orbit information of predetermined, bounded accuracy for any Earth orbit.

Why it matters

Collision-avoidance warnings are only as good as the orbit data every party shares — this is the plumbing that lets thousands of operators agree on where every object is, at the accuracy each is entitled to, without each re-running the math.