Telescope Management for Satellite Tracking: A Decentralized Approach

The rate that the space debris is increasing has now outpaced our ability to build additional sites. Another solution is to use large numbers of low-cost optical sensors, which can be easily deployed at a fraction of the cost of a traditional tracking station. In this paper, we describe the satellite tracking problem, a complex coordination problem that is subject to time and position constraints that must be solved in a communication limited environment. We adopt scheduling by a central facility as an initial solution and compare central and distributed repair mechanisms in terms of tracks completed.