Luyuan Wang

The increasing proliferation of space debris, intermittent space incidents, and the rapid emergence of massive LEO satellite constellations pose significant threats to satellites in orbit. Ground-based optical observations play a crucial role in space surveillance and space situational awareness (SSA). The Zhulong telescopic observation network stands as a pivotal resource in the realm of space object tracking and prediction. This publicly available network plays a critical role in furnishing essential data for accurately delineating and forecasting the orbit of space objects in Earth orbit. Comprising a sophisticated array of hardware components including precise telescopes, optical sensors, and image sensors, the Zhulong network synergistically collaborates to achieve unparalleled levels of precision in tracking and observing space objects. Central to the network’s efficacy is its ability to extract positional information, referred to as angular data, from consecutive images. These angular data serve as the cornerstone for precise orbit determination and prediction. In this study, the CPF (Consolidated Prediction Format) orbit serves as the reference standard against which the accuracy of the angular data is evaluated. The findings reveal that the angular data error of the Zhulong network remains consistently below 3 arcseconds, attesting to its remarkable precision. Moreover, through the accumulation of angular data over time, coupled with the utilization of numerical integration and least squares methods, the Zhulong network facilitates highly accurate orbit determination and prediction for space objects. These methodologies leverage the wealth of data collected by the network to extrapolate trajectories with unprecedented accuracy, offering invaluable insights into the behavior and movement of celestial bodies. The results presented herein underscore the immense potential of electric optic telescopes in the realm of space surveillance. By harnessing the capabilities of the Zhulong network, researchers and astronomers can gain deeper insights into the dynamics of space objects, thereby advancing our understanding of the cosmos. Ultimately, the Zhulong telescopic observation network emerges as a pioneering tool in the quest to unravel the mysteries of the universe.

The real-time routing for satellite communication of the mega-constellations is being challenged due to the large-scale of network nodes, especially on devices with limited computation such as onboard embedded systems. In this paper, a fast routing method is proposed for mega-constellation backbone networks. Firstly, inspired by the regularity and sparse characteristics of mega-constellations, the 4-degree percolation theory is proposed to describe the node search process. Then, dynamic minimum search and mapping methods are used to narrow down the traversal range. The proposed method performs as well as the heap-optimized Dijkstra algorithm with less memory space and dynamic access. The experimental results show that the method proposed in this paper can significantly reduce routing computation time, especially on the onboard, edge-computing or other computation-limited devices.

Large-scale low earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation projects are increasingly adopting inter-satellite links (ISLs) to enable their autonomous and collaborative operation. Due to the large number of satellite constellation network nodes and their continuous movement in orbit, the network nodes may not remain visible to each other at all times, so the ISL-building choices among satellites are diverse and vary with time. As a result, maintaining a network topology requires onboard planning and management. In this paper, we creatively propose an onboard centralized ISL-building planning scheme with the goal of autonomous topology management. A multi-antenna visibility calculation method that takes the antenna installation angle and the turntable rotation threshold into account is provided for the visibility calculation procedure. Additionally, the link-building planning process is modeled using integer linear programming (ILP); however, to tackle the computational complexity problem of ILP, a link-building planning method based on topology stability optimization is presented. The simulation results show that the proposed onboard centralized ISL-building planning scheme can operate among satellites to successfully realize network status collection, visibility calculation, link-building planning, and planning result distribution, as conducted by the dynamic primary satellite. Moreover, the inter-plane link-building planning method based on topology stability optimization improves the network topology stability on the basis of reducing the network delay.