Track before Detect for Space Situation Awareness

Abstract

This article considers the application of multi-target tracking algorithms to Space Situation awareness. The sensor is a telescope fitted with an optical band digital camera. Two different tracking paradigms are demonstrated: the first approach is a detect-then-track method that uses frame-to-frame registration to model the star field and detect a moving satellite, the detections are processed using a point-measurement tracker; the second is a track-before-detect algorithm that uses the telescope images directly as input and jointly tracks the stars and the satellite. The two are compared on experimental imagery collected from a telescope system.