A Robust Method of Preliminary Orbit Determination

The preliminary orbit determination with optical angular measure- ments plays an important role in the survey of space objects. The classical method of orbit computation based on the least square error estimation is not robust while outliers occur in the observation. A robust method is proposed by employing the least absolute deviation estimation. The method reduces the problem of orbit determination to a linear programming problem, and gives the variance of the estimation with the bootstrap method. Numerical check shows that the method is effective and robust, and has a high breakdown point.