Beal, Grace E has requested to schedule their MS Thesis Proposal. This request has been approved by their faculty advisor, the AE Associate Chair for Graduate Programs, and the AE Communications Office. Please proceed to post the annoucement on the OGE website. The details are as follows:
Student Name: Grace Beal
Advisor: Dr. John Christian
Milestone: MS Thesis Proposal
Degree Program: Aerospace Engineering
Title: Optical Space-Based Constellation Design for Space Domain Awareness of Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbits
Abstract: Once at the very edges of human exploration, cislunar space is attracting increasing interest as it becomes more accessible to all space actors. Over the next decade, many more satellites will be launched into cislunar orbits, increasing the need for supporting infrastructure. One critical aspect of that infrastructure is space domain awareness (SDA), which involves tracking satellites for various end goals including collision avoidance, sustainability, and national security. SDA is well-developed for Earth-orbiting satellites, with robust sensor networks distributed across the globe and data sharing between actors. No such infrastructure is currently operational for cislunar space, which is too far for Earth-based sensors to provide persistent coverage. The United States government is actively investing in the development of cislunar SDA capabilities including Oracle Prime, a satellite from the Air Force Research Laboratory, which is being designed to track objects in cislunar space while itself being in an L1 halo orbit. In this work, an observer constellation in select L1 and L2 halo orbits is investigated for its ability to provide optical SDA coverage of the near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) family. Targets are modeled as Lambertian spheres, and visibility constraints including apparent magnitude, lunar occultation, field of view, and exclusion angles are applied. Performance metrics including visibility and custody are evaluated across the candidate observer set. Candidate observer satellites are simulated across equally-spaced phases within each observer orbit, and mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) is applied to identify minimum viable constellation configurations based on prescribed coverage requirements. By comparing different constellation architectures, this work aims to provide insight into the optical sensor requirements for cislunar SDA of the NRHO family.
Date and time: 2026-05-22, 10:30am
Location: Coda C1015 Vinings
Committee:
Dr. John Christian (advisor), School of Aerospace Engineering
Dr. Koki Ho, School of Aerospace Engineering
Dr. Tara Mina, School of Aerospace Engineering