Historical-orbital-data-based method for monitoring the operational status of satellites in low Earth orbit

A method is developed for monitoring the operational status of satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) based on their historical two-line element (TLE) data. In this method, whether the satellite still has the maneuverability to maintain the orbital altitude is used as the criteria for judging the operational status, the whole judgment process includes two steps. The first step is to design a specialized algorithm to detect orbit maintenance maneuvers from the satellite's TLE time-history. The algorithm uses abnormal data segments of the TLE derived semi-major axis time series to identify the orbit maintenance maneuver, and various measures are taken to eliminate the noise interference and to ensure the detection accuracy. The second step is to use the detected maneuvering history to determine the current operational status of the satellite. In this step, the statistical technique is used to get the temporal regularity of the satellite to implement orbit maintenance maneuvers and the allowable range of the natural variation of the semi-major axis, so then the criteria for determining the satellite operational status is developed. Analysis of typical LEO satellites indicates that this method can accurately determine the current operational status of the satellite and provide an approximate estimation interval of the satellite retiring time, which is of practical value.