Where is that spacecraft? Statistically measuring uncertainty for space surveillance
Space surveillance is inherently challenging when compared to other tracking environments due to various reasons, not least of which is the long time gap between surveillance updates. "Unlike the air and missile defense environments where objects are frequently observed, the space surveillance environment data is starved, with many objects going several orbital periods between observations," according to researcher Joshua Horwood. "Thus, it is more challenging to predict the future location of these sparsely-seen objects and they have a tendency to get lost using traditional methods. A new way of tracking them, the Gauss von Mises (GVM) distribution, has improved predictive capabilities that permit one to more effectively maintain custody of infrequently-observed space objects."